CORTICALE THE NEW IIT STARTUP TO STUDY AND TREAT THE BRAIN
It is called Corticale and has established its headquarters in Genoa, thanks to a private loan of 2 million euros. The mission is to bring to the market by the end of 2021 SiNaps (Simultaneous Neural Recording Active Pixel Sensor technology, a technology for studying the brain which, as stated in the note, allows you to “listen” to the brain and study its functioning. The investor is Giuseppe Santella, entrepreneur and top manager with thirty years of experience in numerous companies, who joins the startup as co-founder and president. Corticale’s first goal will be to bring SiNAPS technology to the market, which provides new opportunities for the study of brain functioning with applications in the diagnostic, therapeutic and pharmacological fields. SiNAPS is a technology that will initially target leading companies in the field of neuroelectronics and research centers worldwide and will be available by the end of 2021. Subsequently, in the next few years, it will also be accessible to the clinical and hospital sectors for specific case studies
How Sinaps works.
The technology developed by the IIT laboratories, explains the note, makes it possible to create implantable devices equipped with thousands of neural sensors and as large as a hair. Each device would allow to record (“listen”) the bioelectrical activity of an incredibly large number of neurons in different brain circuits. The flow of brain data captured by these very high resolution devices can be acquired and analyzed and will offer a completely new access to study the principles of brain functioning and pathologies and new opportunities for the development of bio-electronic medical devices for diagnosis and the therapy of diseases such as epilepsy, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. It will also allow the creation of the latest generation of human-machine neural interfaces to control electronic or robotic devices such as lower or upper limb prostheses or exoskeletons.
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The scenery.
“We can think of SiNAPS as a new way of observing the functioning of the brain that revolutionizes its study, greatly expanding our understanding of this organ still partially to be explored” – explains Luca Berdondini, head of the IIT Microtechnology for Neuroelectronics team and Corticale’s scientific consultant and continues – «It is in fact a technological leap forward that changes the cards and opens up new perspectives by offering us an unprecedented degree of definition of the communication mechanisms between nerve cells. A bit like when we went from analogue to digital systems or from cathode ray tube screens to ultra-flat and full HD ones ”concludes Berdondini. Corticale is the third startup born from IIT research in six months.
