No need to wait for the cyborg future—it’s already here. Adding to a growing list of electronics that can be implanted in the body, scientists are working to perfect the ultimate merger of mind and machine: devices fused directly to the brain.

A new type of flexible electronics can be injected through a syringe to unfurl and implant directly into the brains of mice, shows a study published Monday in Nature Nanotechnologystudy published Monday in Nature Nanotechnology. Researchers injected a fine electronic mesh and were able to monitor brain activity in the mice.

“You’re blurring the living and the nonliving,” says Charles Lieber, a nanoscientist at Harvard and co-author of the study. One day, he says, electronics might not only