Human Implantable Brain-Machine-Interfaces

Over the past 15 years, implantable Brain-Machine-Interfaces have made the jump from animal research laboratories to clinical research, providing great opportunities to understand better neural mechanisms involved in learning, communication, motor control and rehabilitation, and to test the feasibility of BMI-based clinical applications. Most of the advances have been focused so far on restoring motor control using a BMI to control external assistive devices like a robotic arm or exoskeleton, or functional electrical stimulation of the paralyzed muscles. Another clinical application aims to restore communication using BMIs to control a cursor on a screen and spelling devices.
This workshop will present some of the current clinical trials using implantable microelectrodes-based BMIs applied in different clinical scenarios, and will feature substantial discussions regarding the neuroengineering needs (e.g. new wireless implants, new data processing techniques based on deep learning, new neuromodulation strategies etc) to realize the expected clinical benefit of these novel and evolving systems.

Organizers

Leigh Hochberg

HochbergLeigh Hochberg is a vascular and critical care neurologist and neuroscientist. His research focuses on the development and testing of novel neurotechnologies to help people with paralysis and other neurologic disorders, and on understanding cortical neuronal ensemble activities in neurologic disease. Dr. Hochberg has appointments as Neurologist, Massachusetts General Hospital, where he attends in the NeuroICU and on the Acute Stroke service; Professor of Engineering, School of Engineering and Carney Institute for Brain Science, Brown University; Director, VA RR&D Center for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology, Providence VAMC; and Senior Lecturer on Neurology at Harvard Medical School. He also directs the Center for Neurotechnology and Neurorecovery for MGH Neurology, where he is the IDE Sponsor-Investigator and Principal Investigator of the BrainGate pilot clinical trials (www.braingate.org) that are conducted by a close collaboration of scientists and clinicians at Brown, Case Western Reserve University, MGH, Providence VAMC, and Stanford University. Dr. Hochberg is a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology and the American Neurological Association. Dr. Hochberg’s BrainGate research, which has been published Nature, Science Translational Medicine, Nature Medicine, Nature Neuroscience, the Journal of Neuroscience, and others, has received support from the Rehabilitation R&D Service of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, NIDCD, the NIH BRAIN Initiative/NINDS, and others.

Ander Ramos

Ander Ramos photoAnder Ramos-Murguialday got his mechanical engineering bachelor degree from the University of Navarre in San Sebastian Spain and a Master of Science in Industrial Engineering from the same institution finishing it at the Technical University of Graz, Austria in 2004. He received a Master of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, finishing the degree at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA in 2007. In 2004 he got the Iñaki Goenaga Fellowship starting his work as a researcher in the Fatronik-Tecnalia Technological Foundation, San Sebastian Spain, being now the director of Tecnalia Germany and the director of the Neurotechnology laboratory. He obtained his PhD in Neuroscience at the Max Planck Graduate School University of Tübingen in 2011, working now leading the neuroprosthetics group in the same institution. His research topics include neuroprosthetics, neuroplasticity and neurorehabilitation using non-invasive and invasive BMI techniques coupled with robotics. Among his several awards, he received Walter Kalkhof-Rose-Gedächtnispreis 2014 (Young Investigator/Scientist Award 2014 by the German Academy of Science, the World Federation for Neurorehabilitation (WFNR) Franz Gerstenbrand Award (2015).

Speakers

Jennifer Collinger, PhD University of Pittsburgh
Nick Ramsey University Medical Center Utrecht
Richard Andersen California Institute of Technology
Jamie Henderson Stanford University
Leigh Hochberg MGH, Harvard University