Brain Folds

A fusion of an ancient paper-folding craft and the gentle touch of acupuncture, these microscopic spikes unfold from flat sheets to form a 3D brain probe that slips into brain tissue and listens to its whispers. Most existing brain probes are flat (good for surface-level recording but lacking penetration) or rigid 3D structures (can damage tissue on entry). The spikes’ balance of strength and flexibility minimised disruption to the tissue while researchers recorded seizure-like events in human brain tissue samples and electrical responses to stimuli in living mouse brains. The developers suggest the approach is scalable so could be used for large-scale sampling of neural tissue electrical activity. This will help researchers study brain abnormal activity patterns in brain disorders such as epilepsy or Parkinson’s, and might eventually guide treatment by assessing a brain’s condition, or facilitating brain-machine interfaces to turn thoughts into action.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by Marie Jung and colleagues
• Bioelectronics, Institute of Biological Information Processing-3, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Advanced Materials, April 2025