Utah array failure analysis, Barrese 2013
Lab or organization
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Utah array failure analysis, Barrese 2013
A study of what failed, rather than a new device. Barrese and colleagues reviewed 78 silicon intracortical microelectrode arrays implanted in 27 rhesus macaques since 1996. The paper was published online on 12 November 2013 in the Journal of Neural Engineering.
The primary abstract lists affiliations at New Jersey Medical School, Brown University and the Providence VA Center for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology. No atlas link is added here for an unrelated lab simply because it shares a university name.
What the cohort showed
| Group | Result |
|---|---|
| All 78 arrays | Recording duration 0 to 2,104 days (5.75 years); mean 387 days, median 182 days |
| 62 completely failed arrays | Mean time to failure 332 days; median 133 days |
| 9 electively ended experiments | Mean recording duration 486 days |
| 7 arrays still active at study close | Mean recording duration 753 days |
Elective terminations and still-active arrays are not counted as observed complete failures. The all-array median is not the median time to failure among the 62 failed arrays.
Failure findings
The authors classified failures as biological, material, mechanical or unknown, and separated abrupt failures from progressive decline.
The abstract reports that 56% of failures occurred within a year. Acute mechanical failures were the most common class (48%), largely due to connector issues (83% within that description). Grossly observable biological failures accounted for 24%; a progressive meningeal reaction separating the array from brain tissue was prominent (14.5%). These percentages are retained in the abstract’s wording; no raw event counts are reconstructed from them.
Without abrupt interruptions, spike amplitude, noise amplitude and viable-channel count declined slowly. The authors’ trend predicted complete signal loss by about eight years. That is a prediction, not an observed eight-year implant outcome. Impedance rose early without an apparent effect on recording quality, then fell over years alongside signal quality. The authors identified insulation failure as the most significant factor in that combination.
What this does and does not mean
The study gives actual failure evidence for a historical implant cohort. It is not evidence that the Utah array research program ended, nor a claim that every array fails on the cohort’s median day. It studies one sensor type and one non-human-primate species, with implants spanning older hardware and connector practice. It does not establish modern human failure rates or compare flexible threads, endovascular electrodes and surface arrays head to head.
The authors proposed wireless implantable systems to replace connectors, control of the meningeal reaction and better insulation materials. Those are proposed engineering responses, not results demonstrated by this retrospective study.
Sources
- Barrese JC, Rao N, Paroo K, Triebwasser C, Vargas-Irwin C, Franquemont L, Donoghue JP. Failure mode analysis of silicon-based intracortical microelectrode arrays in non-human primates. Journal of Neural Engineering 10:066014, 2013. Primary abstract and listed affiliations.
- Publisher record and abstract. DOI 10.1088/1741-2560/10/6/066014.
The full PMC text was not available in the source fetch used for this entry. Detailed per-array histories and figures are not reconstructed from the abstract.