Sensing with Carbon in Neuroengineering

Dear Colleagues,

It gives me great pleasure to present this Special Issue, entitled Sensing with Carbon in Neuroengineering.

The brain is characterized by a complex 3D network organization, allowing communication with all other sites of the human body. How the brain elaborates its signals, how it propagates them along nerves and how this translates into actions are mainly unresolved questions. Such comprehension could help, in the future, to develop artificial brain models for pathological or traumatic neuronal disease studies. Novel therapeutic approaches are expected to provide important insights into brain mechanisms, as well as to improve neural tissue regeneration and restore compromised neuronal network signalling. Recently, neuronal engineering has entered this arena, combining neuroscience and bioengineering to develop new generations of devices for neuronal regeneration, diagnostic and therapeutic research. This has the potential to reshape all branches of modern neuroscience, from neurobiology, neurogenetics, and neurophysiology, to neurosurgery or cognitive neuroscience, scaling up a sub-cellular approach to the entire brain. Significant steps forward have been achieved. Various sensors that interface with neuronal tissue for monitoring neuronal signalling in vitro, ex vivo and in vivo have been tested, proposing  an exciting new field for inquiry into understanding and modulating brain functions. A fundamental factor for the successful development of these approaches emerges from the constant improvement of the materials used to fabricate tools, devices, and scaffolds to be used in neuroengineering-related fields. In this framework, particular attention must be paid to carbon-based materials, made from pure carbon with a variety of atomic hybridization or geometrical structures. In fact, due to their peculiar physicochemical properties, carbon-based materials have been shown to best interact, and establish a particular cross-talk, with neuronal cells.

Despite these achievements, important challenges remain in the fabrication and characterization of these devices. Furthermore, the biological effects and mechanisms are not yet fully understood and thus require further investigation.

The aim of this Research Topic is to attract leading contributions in the neuroscience area to highlight the latest developments in novel tools to sense the complexity of the brain at the system, network, cellular, subcellular and molecular levels. Our goals include advancing the core technologies and materials in neuroengineering, with a particular focus on the design and characterization of carbon-based sensors and their biological impact on in vitro and/or in vivo models. We will accept original research papers, as well as mini-review and review papers.

Dr. Rossana Rauti
Guest Editor

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• brain
• neurons
• sensors
• carbon
• electrophysiology
• carbon nanotubes
• graphene