A domestic research team has developed technology that allows real-time control over the internet from the United States of a brain implant device in laboratory animals located in Korea. Because drug infusion and light-based stimulation of specific neurons can be controlled remotely, it is expected to be used for long-term brain research.
Professor Jeong Jae-woong's team in the School of Electrical Engineering at KAIST said on the 27th that, together with Professor Kim Hwa-young's team at the College of Medicine at Yonsei University, they developed a wireless neural implant based on the Internet of Things (IoT). The findings were published in July in the international journal Science Advances.
In conventional brain and neural research, animals and equipment were often connected by wires, or researchers had to operate wireless devices directly at close range. The team connected the device to the internet so that drug delivery and light stimulation could be controlled regardless of location or distance, or set to operate automatically at scheduled times.
The device is about the size of a sugar cube and integrates a microfluidic system that delivers drugs to targeted brain regions with micro light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that stimulate specific neurons. The drug reservoir can be replaced using a magnet, allowing refills without additional surgery.
The researchers implanted the device in mice and tested its performance for four weeks. During this process, a researcher in Chicago successfully operated the device in Daejeon remotely over the internet.
They also confirmed that when cocaine was administered into the mouse brain while delivering light stimulation to specific neurons, addiction-related behavioral responses were suppressed. The team said this demonstrated the potential for brain-circuit studies that combine drug delivery with photostimulation.
Professor Jeong Jae-woong said, "This technology is meaningful in that it expands a wireless brain implant using light and drugs from a short-range operation tool into an IoT brain-engineering platform that enables long-term, repeated, remote experiments," adding, "In the long term, we expect it to be applied to the development of intelligent implantable medical devices for the diagnosis and treatment of brain diseases."
References
Science Advances (2026), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aee8648