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Brain Day: Monday, March 14, VCU (Commonwealth
Ballroom, Student Commons)
The VCU Biopsychology
program hosted the 5th annual Brain Day Conference in
conjunction with National Brain
Awareness Week. The
conference featured two guest speakers and a poster/demonstration session by the
200 high school student participants. Brain
Day is a unique one-day conference on topics related to the brain and behavior
and is a partnership between VCU Biopsychology Program and Henrico County Public
Schools (HCPS). Attending were AP
Psychology students from Hermitage H.S., Godwin H.S. and the VCU dual-enrollment
students at the Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School who take the VCU psychology
course Physiological Psychology (PSYC 401).
This year’s featured speakers were Jill Bettinger, PhD, Assistant
Professor, Department of Pharmacology & Toxicology, VCU who spoke on “What
Drunk Worms Can Tell Us about Drinking:
the Molecular Neurobiology of Ethanol Response” and Kelly G. Lambert, PhD,
Professor and Chair, Department of Psychology, Randolph-Macon College who spoke
on “Prehistoric
Prozac: Lessons From the Trust Fund Rats.”
The student participants presented over 50 posters on various topics
related to the neurobiological basis of behavior such as: depression,
synesthesia, emotions, addiction, taste preferences, visual procession,
attention and the brain and music. Of
special interest were the student demonstrations of neural
firing of cockroach limbs using “Spiker boxes” in
which students can actually hear neuronal firing and visually see it on computer
sine wave programs. The conference
was directed by Joseph H. Porter, PhD and Tim Donahue, graduate student in
Biopsychology.
Thanks to all for another great CVCSN symposium! See
below for pics and summary of this year's event
Neuroengineering: Insights from Brain-Machine Interfaces
(click for Program) March
18th, 2011 9 AM - 5 PM
Thanks
to Les Keniston for the photos The
Central Virginia Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience (CVCSN) held its 23rd
Annual Neuroscience Symposium “Neuroengineering:
Insights from Brain-Machine Interfaces (BMIs)”
on March 18, 2011 in the MCV Alumni House Conference Center at Virginia
Commonwealth University. The
symposium reviewed the initiatives
being taken toward restorative
medicine, aimed at allowing amputees/
paralytics to use their own brain signals to drive computer-controlled
prosthetics. Specific components of
this process were addressed by the different speakers.
The lead-off speaker for the symposium was
Peter Pidcoe, PT, Ph.D. and biomedical engineer in VCU’s Department of
Physical Therapy who provided a comprehensive overview of
the history and variety of prosthetic devices as well as their design and
effectiveness. Next, to understand
the brain signals that control movement in normal limbs or robotic prostheses,
Andrew Schwarz Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh demonstrated that signals
from populations of cortical neurons in a monkey can effectively drive a robotic
arm. A video of a monkey feeding
itself in this way is available on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz_DV7elpxw&feature=related).
For neural signals to drive prostheses, those signals must be converted
into computer language and neuro-computationalist Tom Anastasio ,Ph.D.
(University of Illinois-Champlain) explained the mathematical bases of neural
signaling. However, to send a
computer neural messages from a living brain, there must be an artificial
interface that is implanted into neural tissue.
This was addressed by Patrick Tresco, Ph.D. and Chair of Biomedical
Engineering at the University of Utah who
showed that long-term electrode implantation can be optimized by engineering
electrodes with novel geometries and coatings.
To summarize how BMIs are used by and affect patients, Col. Geoffrey Ling
MD, Ph.D., Chair of Neurology at Uniformed Services University of the Health
Sciences and program manager at DARPA, not only presented a compelling
justification for this collaboration between biomedical research and
engineering, but also showed numerous film clips of patients successfully
manipulating their new prosthetic limbs. The
conference was attended by 80 VCU faculty and students, faculty from Virginia
Union University, as well as a contingent of biomedical engineering students
from the University of Virginia. For
more information about this event, contact:
Alex Meredith (mameredi@vcu.edu)
or Ruth Clemo (rclemo@vcu.edu). Design
and construction of biomechanical therapeutics
Peter Pidcoe, PT, Ph.D,
Department of Physical Therapy, Virginia Commonwealth University,
Richmond, VA Neural
Encoding of movement and intention
Andrew B. Schwartz, Ph.D.,
University of
Pittsburgh, Department of Neurobiology, Pittsburgh, PA Neurocomputation,
how to get Instructions from neurons into machines?
Thomas J. Anastasio,
Ph.D.,
Beckman Institute of NeuroTechnology, University of Illinois, Urbanna, IL Biocompatibility
and bio/implant interface
Patrick A. Tresco, Ph.D.,
Department of Bioengineering,
University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT Patient
application of Brain-Machine Interfaces
Geoffrey S.F. Ling, MD, Ph.D.,
Colonel
US Army Med Corps, Department of Neurology,
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda MD
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