New medical chip can swim through your blood and stick to your brain

Washington (dpa) – Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) say they have developed tiny electronic devices, one-billionth the size of a grain of rice, that can be injected into an arm, travel through the bloodstream and attach to the brain. The "microscopic, wireless bioelectronics" are designed to "autonomously self-implant in a target region of the brain," according to MIT, which said the researchers have spent six years working on the project. The idea is that these tiny chips deliver "focused treatment" by electronically stimulating the targeted area of the brain – a development that could lead to new treatments for brain diseases and eliminate the need for risky and complex surgeries to implant devices. The team’s paper was published by the journal Nature Biotechn