Toxicity study of graphene-coated Poly(methyl methacrylate) membranes on the brain cortex of rats

Graphene is a material, which has attracted great attention of the scientific community in several fields of biomedicine, neurosciences being one of the fields holding great interest for the application of graphene-based materials and devices. Our study aimed to determine the in vivo brain tissue reaction and to study the possible impairment of memory in a long-term Graphene exposure. Towards this aim we tested the toxicity of graphene membrane in the form of few layers (few layers graphene, FLG) implanted on the frontal brain cortex of adult Wistar rats after careful durotomy. The results from this study advance our knowledge on graphene in vivo toxicity in CNS and suggest that the application of FLG as a patch on the brain cortex seems to be quite safe under the experimental conditions tested, herein as no change in locomotor activity of the rats or major histopathological reactions of the brain to the material were observed.