An implantable microsystem for long-term study on the mechanism of deep brain stimulation

Abstract

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has been found useful for treating neural diseases such as the Parkinson's disease, while the mechanism is not well understood and the DBS is suspected of inducing various side effects. This paper presents a microsystem suitable for studying the mechanism of the DBS. The microsystem contains eight channels of neural recording and stimulation circuits, an analog-to-digital converter, and a digital information hub. In addition, to facilitate long-term study, the microsystem is implantable and batteryless. Both power and data are transmitted wirelessly through a single coil by the time-division-multiple-access (TDMA) technique. The microsystem has been designed and fabricated with the 0.18μm CMOS technology. The pilot testing results are presented and discussed.