Applications of Nanotechnology to the Brain and Central Nervous System

In Reshaping the Human Condition: Exploring Human Enhancement, a recent report by the Rathenau Institute,in collaboration with the British Embassy in the Hague and the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, Professor the Lord Winston, Professor of Science and Society at Imperial College dismisses any concern about the application of nanotechnology research to the field of neuroscience as too nascent and inconclusive (Zonneveld et al. 2008). No other mention of nanotechnology occurs in the report. This view is common. In informal conversations with a number of leading researchers in the field of neural prosthetics, our colleague found little knowledge of nanotechnology or expectation that it would have any significant impact on the field for the near future. Current neural prosthetics technologies operate at the micrometer scale range, at the smallest, and this was deemed as sufficient for the design of neural implant devices (Robert, personal communication). Imagine our surprise, then, when a search of Web of Science generated over 10,000 research articles at the intersection of nanotechnology and neuroscience.

Author(s):Christina Nulle, Clark A. Miller, Alan Porter, and Harmeet Singh Gandhi
Organization(s): Arizona State University, Georgia Institute of Technology
Source: Nanotechnology, the Brain, and the Future – Yearbook of Nanotechnology in Society
Year: 2013

http://www.springerlink.com/content/xp60737h33335485/abstract/

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