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New battery stimulates damaged nerves...


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#1 Bob-C

Bob-C

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Posted 04 October 2005 - 10:46 AM

Hi everyone, according to an article from sciencedaily.com by Astara March entitled "New battery stimulates damaged nerves," "A device an inch long and only a little wider than a pencil lead is poised to help people with a wide variety of dysfunction, such as Parkinson's disease, urinary incontinence, epilepsy, stroke and spinal-cord damage.

Currently in the approval stage at the Food and Drug Administration, the Bion, as it is called, is a micro-stimulator so small it can be implanted without surgery near damaged nerves to complete neural connections broken by injury or degenerative disease.

Dr. Robert West, considered one of the foremost silicon chemists in the world, developed the electrolyte that conducts energy in the Bion's lithium battery at the Organosilicon Research Center of the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

The other components were developed by a consortium: the electrodes at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, the battery at Quallion LLC in Sylmar, Calif., and the micro-stimulator at Advanced Bionics near Boston.

The Alfred Mann Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology provided the funding.

Lithium batteries have been part of implantable medical devices for years, but West's new electrolyte shrinks the battery so it can be used with neural circuits. The new liquid core increases the battery's life from three to 12 years and allows it to be recharged from outside the body."

Cheers, :)

Bob-C
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