Radboud University, Donders Institute

The Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour is part of Radboud University in Nijmegen. Radboud’s DBI2 page lists the institute as the organization behind the Dutch Brain Interface Initiative, a 10-year research programme (2022 to 2032) led by Prof Francesco Battaglia of Donders.

Dutch Brain Interface Initiative (DBI2)

DBI2 is a consortium, not a Donders product. Radboud describes it as more than 60 researchers from eight Dutch institutions: Radboud University, Delft University of Technology, Eindhoven University of Technology, Erasmus University Medical Center, University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and the University of Twente. It is funded under NWO’s Gravitation programme.

Its Neurotechnology hardware area states three techniques: microfabricated high-density electrode arrays for recording and modulation, non-invasive focused ultrasound modulation, and miniaturized whole-brain calcium imaging. The Year 2 annual report (October 2023 to September 2024) lists work items for that area. Most are led by principal investigators at Delft University of Technology, so they are not attributed to Donders here.

• Flexible, stretchable, freely floating active electrode arrays (TS4): graphene electrode designs developed with the Battaglia lab at Radboud; graphene arrays with 30 µm electrodes on transparent substrates recorded spikes from brain slices. A chronic-use version (TS10) is scheduled for the second phase, Year 6 to 10.
• Electronics aimed at 100,000+ single-cell-resolution bidirectional interfaces (TS5): a stated goal. The report’s result is on-chip spike-sorting hardware validation, not an electrode count.
• Microfabricated multimodal neurostimulators (TS2): early stage; the report lists a new experimental setup being prepared.

These are program work items. The report does not show a fabricated implant used in a person.

Cataloged hardware and applications

• TU Delft transfer-free multilayer graphene MEA (DBI2 TS4): the DBI2 annual report credits Donders’s Battaglia lab as a collaborator on the graphene electrode designs. The device is an in vitro slice-recording array from Delft University of Technology; no Radboud or Donders author is on its paper. It is not an implant and not a Donders-developed device.

No Donders-developed implant has a device or application sheet.

Studies with Donders researchers

• Speech reconstruction, 2023: Radboud and UMC Utrecht researchers, with lead author Julia Berezutskaya at Donders and UMC Utrecht, decoded brain activity from temporary brain implants in people with epilepsy into audible speech. Participants said twelve words aloud. The Radboud news item reports 92 to 100% accuracy in predicting the words. The electrode hardware is not named in the news item, and it is not catalogued here. Source: Radboud research news.
• Visual cortical prosthesis simulation, 2024: van der Grinten et al. in eLife, with authors at the University of Twente, Donders and the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, published a phosphene simulator for optimizing cortical visual prostheses. It is computational and does not establish a Donders-fabricated implant.

Related Utrecht work

The Utrecht NeuroProsthesis study of two people with locked-in syndrome (subdural strips over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; Leinders et al., Scientific Reports 2020) lists only UMC Utrecht affiliations. It is not a Donders study and sits with the UMC Utrecht Ramsey group. The paper says the implanted components are described in the earlier 2016 report, cataloged as Fully implanted ECoG BCI in locked-in ALS, 2016. UMC Utrecht is also one of the eight DBI2 member institutions.

Not public or not verified

A Donders-owned implant geometry, electrode specifications, a Donders-branded device, array manufacturer for the 2023 speech study, regulatory pathway and funding beyond the NWO Gravitation grant were not found in the sources read.

Source notes

• DBI2 programme page, Radboud University.
• DBI2 Neurotechnology hardware.
• DBI2 Annual Report, Year 2.
• Radboud research news, 29 August 2023.
• van der Grinten et al., eLife 2024, authors and affiliations read through Europe PMC.
• Leinders et al., Scientific Reports 2020.