Biological Impact on the Stability and Reliability of Acute and Chronic Platinum based Thin Film Neural Interfaces in Vivo.

Reliability, stability and biocompatibility of an im-plant are the keys to transferring a preclinical study into the re-ality of clinical applications for diagnostics and therapy of pa-tients. Amongst the smallest and most critical components of neuroprostheses are the neural interfaces to the tissue. These could be seen as the most functional and yet most sensitive parts to connect to and interact with the nervous system. Thin film systems in the submicro- to nanometers range with a high num-ber of channels record biological signals and excite nerves aspiring high spatial sensitivity at the scale of few neurons. The im-pairments of the technical material caused by the harsh environ-ment of the human body and potential damage to the tissue by the foreign body state the greatest obstacle to overcome. Here, we present an analysis on impact of acutely and chronically im-planted subdural electrocorticography (ECoG) recording arrays on the neural tissue and the accompanied material failure mechanisms of the thin film neural interfaces in vivo.