Breakfast Club Seminar

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Event Details
  • Date/Time:
    • Tuesday February 10, 2015
      7:30 am - 8:30 am
  • Location: Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering & Bioscience, Room 1128
  • Phone: (404) 894-6228
  • URL: http://www.petitinstitute.gatech.edu
  • Email:
  • Fee(s):
    N/A
  • Extras:
Contact

Colly Mitchell

Summaries

Summary Sentence: "Modulation of Peripheral Nerve Conduction and its Application to Metabolic Diseases" - Robert Butera, PhD - Georgia Tech

Full Summary: The Petit Institute Breakfast Club seminar series was started with the spirit of the Institute's interdisciplinary mission in mind and started to feature local Petit Institute faculty member's research in a seminar format. Faculty are often asked to speak at other universities and conferences, but rarely present at their home institution, this seminar series is an attempt to close that gap. The Petit Institute Breakfast Club is open to anyone in the bio-community.

Media
  • Breakfast Club Seminar Series Breakfast Club Seminar Series
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"Modulation of Peripheral Nerve Conduction and its Application to Metabolic Diseases"

Robert Butera, PhD
Professor
School of Electrical Engineering
Georgia Tech

The research in my lab ranges from neuroengineering to computational neuroscience. We utilize techniques including intracellular electrophysiology, extracellular electrophysiology, computational modeling, and real-time computing applied to conduct many of these experiments. Specific active research areas include:

  • Neuromodulation of peripheral nerve activity. We study how kHz electrical AC stimuli block conduction in peripheral nerve, and how in certain circumstances this electrical block can be selective (i.e. only block specific fibers)
  • Synchronization properties of neurons. We investigate how the biophysical properties of individual neurons relate to the ability of neurons to synchronize the timing of the firing of their action potentials to other neurons. The synchronization of neuron action potential firing underlies a range of neurological processes from information representation in sensory systems to motor pattern generation underlying repetitive processes such as breathing and walking.
  • Real-time computing methods for electrophysiology experiments. Our lab develops open source software that allow real-time computer simulations to interact with ongoing experiments. In general, the system is designed to solve large sets of differential equations in real-time, which maintaining time-locking with external inputs from experiments and generating outputs back to those same experiments. This closed-loop paradigm is called the “dynamic clamp” in neuroscience, but this approach can be applied to many other types of experiments as well.

Other interests include nonlinear dynamical systems and oscillatory electronic circuits inspired by some of our neurobiological research. For much of my career we have also been heavily involve in the study of the neural basis of respiration. We also have a large undergraduate group called Brain Beats that is involved in studying how humans cognitive generate and respond to periodic rhythms (such as music).

Related Links

Additional Information

In Campus Calendar
Yes
Groups

Wallace H. Coulter Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB)

Invited Audience
Undergraduate students, Faculty/Staff, Graduate students
Categories
Seminar/Lecture/Colloquium
Keywords
BK Club, graduate students, IBB
Status
  • Created By: Colly Mitchell
  • Workflow Status: Published
  • Created On: Nov 18, 2014 - 8:41am
  • Last Updated: Apr 13, 2017 - 5:21pm