Michaela Nesvarova discusses the impacts of brain disorders and routes to offering less invasive methods to monitor them.
Living with a brain disorder often means relying on medication that does not work for everyone and, in some cases, surgery. EU-funded researchers are now investigating whether nanotechnology could one day offer a safer, less invasive alternative.
For decades, treating serious brain disorders has often meant making a difficult trade-off. Symptoms could be relieved, but usually at the cost of invasive surgery and implanted electrodes that stay in the body for life.
“Having wires in your body isn’t ideal,” said neuroscientist Mavi Sanchez-Vives, head of the Systems Neuroscience group at the IDIBAPS research institute in Barcelona, Spain. “Yet for many patients, it has been the only…