In the future, very small wireless devices could be placed inside human brains to study and stimulate brain cells. That is the goal of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. University researchers have created extremely small sensors, called neural dust, to study brain cells. The word neural describes something related to the body’s nervous system. The researchers hope these sensors will treat conditions of the brain such as epilepsy. The sensors also could improve the brain’s control of the devices used to replace missing or injured parts of the body, called prosthetics. In 2003, Jan Scheuermann permanently lost the ability to move her arms and legs because of a disease called spinocerebellar degeneration. But she was able to feed herself using a robotic hand controlled by her thoughts in 2012. Doctors connected a sensor to her brain using wires. The sensor received the commands from her brain and sent them to the robotic device.
