Neural synchrony-monitoring wireless brain implant for intractable epilepsy neuromodulation

A validation of a closed-loop system-on-chip (SoC) for epilepsy treatment is presented. A 12mm² 0.13μm CMOS SoC provides the functionality of neural recording, neural stimulation and early seizure detection based on the bivariate phase synchrony estimation algorithm. The SoC can operate in a closed loop, has 64 neural recording and 64 neural stimulation channels, and dissipates 1.4mW and 1.5mW across 64 channels for neural recording and stimulation, respectively. Two in vivo experiments with freely moving rats based on a non-convulsive and convulsive seizure model are presented. The first in vivo experiment validates the results by comparing the output of the SoC with a SIMULINK model of the implant. The second in vivo experiment validates the SoC in early seizure detection and as a closed-loop intractable epilepsy treatment with 80 percent efficacy. Long Evans rats are used for all experiments. All data are cross-validated by a conventional benchtop amplifier.