New jelly-based ‘brain batteries’ inspired by electric eels could treat epilepsy

A team of scientists has developed a new device, inspired by a particularly slippery species of underwater organism, that could transform the way we treat certain neurological diseases.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge say they came up with the idea of ​​using gelatinous materials to build “self-healing batteries” after studying the muscle cells of electric eels.

Because these materials are conducive to electricity while remaining soft and flexible, scientists say it may well be possible to implant batteries into the human brain, which could revolutionize drug delivery and the treatment of epilepsy and other diseases.

In an interview with The Independent, researcher Stephen O’Neill said: “It is difficult to design a material that is both highly stretchable and highly conductive, because these two properties are normally at odds with each other.

“As a general rule, conductivity decreases when a material is stretched.”

Gelatin batteries, however, can be stretched up to a factor of ten without losing any of their conductivity.

While this may have the most obvious applications in external wearable electrical devices, the team says it is investigating how existing subcutaneous implants could be enhanced by batteries that can be literally molded into living human tissue.

Oren Scherman, another researcher behind this recent breakthrough, said: “We can tailor the mechanical properties of hydrogels to match human tissues.

“Because they do not contain any rigid components such as metal, a hydrogel implant would be much less likely to be rejected by the body or cause scar tissue to build up.”

Preparations are already underway to test the new batteries on living organisms, in order to assess the possibilities of their safe application in humans.

The results were published alongside a comparable study conducted at Nanjing University in China.

There, researchers developed a similarly malleable lithium-ion battery that could one day be used to build body-integrated medical monitors to track patients’ vital signs.

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