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Scientists Discover Way to Send Information into Black Holes Without Using Energy

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This New Brain Technology Is Making the Skull Grow Back—Here’s How

 Imagine a future where brain implants don’t just connect with neurons—they also help the skull heal itself.

That future may be closer than we think.

Researchers at Dartmouth Engineering have developed a promising new technique that combines electronic brain implants with materials that encourage natural bone regrowth. The approach could change how doctors place long-term brain devices and make recovery safer, faster, and more comfortable for patients.

The study, led by professors Alexander Boys and Katie Hixon, brings together two powerful fields: thin-film bioelectronics and regenerative tissue engineering. Their work was recently published in Advanced Materials Technologies and will appear on the journal’s cover in March.

At its heart, this innovation solves two major problems at once: how to maintain long-term access to the brain and how to restore the skull after surgery.

Two Challenges, One Smart Solution

Today, placing any electronic device on the brain—such as implants used for Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, or brain monitoring—requires surgeons to remove a piece of the skull.

This creates a difficult trade-off.

If the implant is large, surgeons must cut a bigger opening. Often, they place the device temporarily, take measurements, remove it, and then replace the skull bone. In other cases, metal plates and screws are used to hold devices in place, leaving hard materials beneath the skin that can cause discomfort, infection, or skin erosion over time.

Boys and Hixon wanted a better solution.

Boys’ lab specializes in building ultra-thin electronic devices that sit gently on brain tissue. Hixon’s lab focuses on helping bone regrow using advanced biomaterials.

“So we looked at solving two problems at once,” Boys explains. “One is developing long-term access to larger regions of the brain, and the second is regrowing the skull over an implanted electronic device.”

Their idea was simple but powerful: place a flexible electronic implant on the brain, then cover it with a special scaffold that encourages bone to grow back naturally.

A Scaffold That Helps Bone Heal

The key material in this breakthrough is a cryogel scaffold—a soft, sponge-like structure made from biodegradable chitosan and gelatin. It contains many tiny interconnected pores, creating space for cells to move in and form new tissue.

This scaffold acts like a temporary framework. After surgery, bone cells migrate into it, gradually rebuilding the skull while the material slowly degrades.

In the study, the researchers combined Boys’ thin-film neural recording arrays with Hixon’s bone-regenerating cryogel.

The results were encouraging.

“We saw comparable bone formation between a cryogel-only scaffold and one with the integrated neural device,” Hixon says. Even better, over a two-week testing period, there was no significant immune response, showing that the body accepted the combined system.

This means the implant can stay in place while the skull heals around it—something that hasn’t been possible before.

Students Bridging Biology and Electronics

Two Ph.D. students led the hands-on research: Levi Olevsky from Hixon’s lab and Jonathan Pelusi from Boys’ lab.

Their collaboration reflects the interdisciplinary spirit of the project.

“In the beginning, we were just brainstorming how we could combine our two fields,” Olevsky says. “Combining bioelectronics with tissue regeneration was probably the coolest part.”

Pelusi adds that their goal now is to “bridge the gap between the organic and the inorganic”—creating a direct interface between living tissue and electronic systems.

This blend of biology and engineering is opening doors to entirely new types of medical devices.

Rethinking How Brain Implants Meet the Skull

Traditional brain implants often rely on metal hardware to hold everything in place. These parts can irritate the skin and increase the risk of infection.

The Dartmouth team’s approach could eliminate much of that.

Instead of screws or plates, the patient’s own bone grows back over the implant, holding it securely and naturally.

“Our method would essentially regrow the region with natural bone while maintaining the implant placement,” Boys explains.

Hixon adds that this could lead to faster recovery and fewer complications. Without hard metal parts pressing against the skin, patients may experience less irritation and better long-term comfort.

Big Possibilities for Future Medicine

This technology could have wide-ranging applications.

One major area is brain–computer interfaces, which allow people to control devices or communicate using brain signals. Long-lasting, stable access to the brain is essential for these systems to work reliably.

Another potential use is in orthopedics, where similar implants could help monitor pain or healing in bones.

The system could also help scientists better understand how bones regenerate in real time—something that has been difficult to study until now.

“With these implants, anything that’s happening we can record as it happens,” Boys says.

Hixon points out that the scaffold itself can be customized. It could be made slightly conductive to support electrical stimulation of bone, a technique already used in clinics. Minerals could be added to speed up bone growth. The same basic materials might even be adapted to help heal soft tissues.

“That’s the cool thing about tissue engineering,” she says. “You start with base materials and adapt them for many different uses.”

Toward Fully Integrated Bioelectronic Systems

So far, the study shows that electronic devices and bone-regenerating scaffolds can work together successfully. The next step is deeper integration.

Rather than simply placing electronics inside a scaffold, the team hopes to fabricate both as one seamless system. In the future, they may even grow living cells directly into the device, creating hybrid systems that combine electronics, biomaterials, and biology.

Another exciting idea is making both the scaffold and electronics fully absorbable by the body.

“If everything dissolves after a certain amount of time,” Pelusi explains, “you eliminate the need for a second surgery to remove the device—which is huge.”

Powered by Collaboration

The project brought together engineers, medical researchers, and students from multiple departments, including Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and Geisel School of Medicine.

The team holds regular “synergy sessions,” where students share progress and look for new ways to collaborate.

“At Dartmouth, there’s no real sense of competition between labs,” Hixon says. “It’s all about working together.”

That cooperative environment helped turn an ambitious idea into a working prototype.

A Glimpse Into the Future

This research represents an important step toward smarter, safer brain implants—devices that don’t just connect with the brain but also work in harmony with the body’s natural healing processes.

By pairing electronics with regenerative materials, the Dartmouth team is reimagining what medical implants can be.

Their work offers a hopeful vision of future healthcare: where technology supports biology, recovery is faster, and patients can benefit from long-term brain access without sacrificing comfort or safety.

In short, this breakthrough doesn’t just connect machines to minds—it helps the body heal itself along the way.

Reference: L. M. Olevsky, J. C. Pelusi, C. E. Stewart, et al. “ Interfacing Thin-Film Bioelectronics with Bone Regenerative Cryogel Scaffolds for Transosseous Cortical Access.” Advanced Materials Technologies (2025): e00692. https://doi.org/10.1002/admt.202500692

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