Broadly speaking, nanoparticles (or nanorobots, depending on how complicated they are) that scan the brain from the inside, in vivo. The sort of capabilities I’m imagining is the ability to monitor every neuron in large neural circuits simultaneously, each for many different chemical signals (such as certain neurotransmitters). Of course, since this technology doesn’t exist yet, the specifics are necessarily uncertain—these probes might include CMOS circuitry, they might be based on DNA origami, or they might be unlike any technology that currently exists. Such probes would allow for building much more accurate maps of brain activity.
Nanotechnology is rarely the most practical way to probe very small things. People have been able to infer molecular structures since the 19th century. Modern molecular biology/biochemistry makes use of electron microscope, fluorescent microscopy, and sequencing-based assays, among other techniques.
Nanotechnology is technology that has parts operating in the range of between 1 nm and 100 nm, so actually this technology is nanotechnology—as is much of the rest of biotechnology.
You’re right that the usefulness of non-biotech based nanotechnology (what people typically think of as nanotechnology) hasn’t been used much—that’s largely due to it being a nascent area. I expect that to change over the coming decades as the technology improves. It might not, though, as biotech based nanotechnology might stay in the lead.
What do you mean by nanoscale neural probes? What are the questions that these probes would answer?
Broadly speaking, nanoparticles (or nanorobots, depending on how complicated they are) that scan the brain from the inside, in vivo. The sort of capabilities I’m imagining is the ability to monitor every neuron in large neural circuits simultaneously, each for many different chemical signals (such as certain neurotransmitters). Of course, since this technology doesn’t exist yet, the specifics are necessarily uncertain—these probes might include CMOS circuitry, they might be based on DNA origami, or they might be unlike any technology that currently exists. Such probes would allow for building much more accurate maps of brain activity.
Technology to do something like this is already being developed, but it’s not nanotechnology: https://www.nature.com/articles/nmeth.3151
Nanotechnology is rarely the most practical way to probe very small things. People have been able to infer molecular structures since the 19th century. Modern molecular biology/biochemistry makes use of electron microscope, fluorescent microscopy, and sequencing-based assays, among other techniques.
Nanotechnology is technology that has parts operating in the range of between 1 nm and 100 nm, so actually this technology is nanotechnology—as is much of the rest of biotechnology.
You’re right that the usefulness of non-biotech based nanotechnology (what people typically think of as nanotechnology) hasn’t been used much—that’s largely due to it being a nascent area. I expect that to change over the coming decades as the technology improves. It might not, though, as biotech based nanotechnology might stay in the lead.