Neurological Disorders

Challenge:

A neurological disorder is any disorder of the nervous system. Structural, biomechanical or electrical abnormalities in the brain, spinal cord or other nerves can result in a range of symptoms.

Technologies Available/Used:

Neural Interfaces
Neural Probes
Sensor arrays
Prosthetics

Relevant Research From UM Faculty

Dr. James Weiland – Brain Imaging in Humans with Retinal Implants

The long-term goal of this project is to study how the human brain responds to sight recovery. Prior work has shown that even in the adult brain, whereas structural plasticity is limited, functional plasticity results in profound changes in how the brain processes sensory input. The visual cortex of people who lost vision in adulthood can become active in response to tactile input, a phenomenon known as cross-modal plasticity. What is unclear is the impact of this functional plasticity on sight recovery therapy such as retinal prostheses. Prior work in our lab has established the feasibility of brain imaging in Argus II retinal prosthesis patients and studied cross-modal activation in patients with retinitis pigmentosa.

Dr. Tim Bruns – Closed-loop neuromodulation for bladder control

- One of the goals of our group is to develop interfaces with the peripheral nervous system to restore and understand pelvic organ function
- Current electrical stimulation therapies for bladder function operate in open-loop mode, such that the state of the bladder is not taken into account. We are developing a closed-loop approach that stimulates to control the bladder. We base stimulation timings on neural recordings that are used to estimate the bladder pressure and state.
- We are also collaborating with electrical engineers to develop and evaluate novel microelectrodes which will enhance our ability to identify neural activity and selectively stimulate individual neurons.