Forbes December 29, 2025
Treating brain diseases is extraordinarily challenging, because drugs often work poorly and implants require risky surgery that can jeopardize critical brain functions. A group at MIT has sought a different approach, using the natural ability of living cells to detect diseased brain areas and ferry microscopic electronic devices directly to these regions. These devices, smaller than a single cell, can then be remotely activated with infrared light to modulate local brain activity.
When we imagine a brain implant, we usually picture an operating room: shaved scalp, opened skull, electrodes carefully placed in the tissue. Instead of implants, these devices function as non-surgical, microchips carried by the body’s own cells. Light from outside the head would then power these devices, nudging...
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