Biological resources within the human body can be used to operate neural implants

Implantable neural devices have many therapeutic, diagnostic, and prosthetic applications. Although there have been exciting developments in constructing these devices, two critical problems, data communication between the implanted device and external computers as well as electrical power to the device, have not yet been solved. We investigate these problems using the volume conduction properties of the human body. A prototype implantable device is constructed equipped with a volume conduction data communication channel. A new power delivery antenna is conceptualized, inspired by a study of the power delivery mechanisms of electric fish. Our investigation indicates that the volume conduction resources within the human body may provide a powerful solution to both problems.