>As its whiskers flitter, the mouse’s brain sparks with activity. A tiny implant records the electrical chatter and beams it to a nearby computer.
>Smaller than a grain of salt, the implant is powered by and transmits data with light. Unlike most implants, it moves with the brain to reduce scarring. Dubbed MOTE, the device reliably captured electrical signals for a year in mice—about half their lifespan—without obvious damage.
>“The long-term recording of neural activity could be used to understand complex behaviors and disorders,” Sunwoo Lee at Nanyang Technological University, Alyosha Molnar at Cornell University, and team [wrote](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41928-025-01484-1) in a recent paper describing the implant.
WaterNerd518 on
This little nugget from the article is pretty wild itself: “they only work in genetically engineered mice with glow-in-the-dark neurons.”
2 Comments
>As its whiskers flitter, the mouse’s brain sparks with activity. A tiny implant records the electrical chatter and beams it to a nearby computer.
>Smaller than a grain of salt, the implant is powered by and transmits data with light. Unlike most implants, it moves with the brain to reduce scarring. Dubbed MOTE, the device reliably captured electrical signals for a year in mice—about half their lifespan—without obvious damage.
>“The long-term recording of neural activity could be used to understand complex behaviors and disorders,” Sunwoo Lee at Nanyang Technological University, Alyosha Molnar at Cornell University, and team [wrote](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41928-025-01484-1) in a recent paper describing the implant.
This little nugget from the article is pretty wild itself: “they only work in genetically engineered mice with glow-in-the-dark neurons.”