With so few people outfitted with these devices, their longevity is still unknown. So far, the Utah array has lasted up to 10 years in monkeys. In Copeland’s case, his arrays are still working, but not as well as in the first year or so after being implanted, says Robert Gaunt, a biomedical engineer at the University of Pittsburgh and a member of Copeland’s research team. “The body is a very difficult place to put electronics and engineered systems into,” Gaunt says. “It’s an aggressive environment, and the body is always trying to get rid of these things.”
Implanted arrays can provoke an immune response in the neural tissue that
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