IEEE-EMBS: Spring Meeting

*********************************
There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
*********************************

Event Details
  • Date/Time:
    • Tuesday March 29, 2016 - Wednesday March 30, 2016
      6:30 pm - 7:59 pm
  • Location: GTRI Conference Center, 250 14th St NW, Atlanta, GA 30318
  • Phone:
  • URL:
  • Email:
  • Fee(s):
    N/A
  • Extras:
Contact

Martha Willis

Summaries

Summary Sentence: "Reading and Writing the Neural Code: What’s Going on in the White House Brain Initiative?" - Garrett Stanley, Ph.D - Georgia Tech

Full Summary: No summary paragraph submitted.

"Reading and Writing the Neural Code: What’s Going on in the White House Brain Initiative?"

Garrett Stanley, Ph.D.
Professor
Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
Georgia Tech


The external world is represented in the brain as spatiotemporal patterns of electrical activity. Sensory signals, such as light, sound, and touch, are transduced at the periphery and subsequently transformed by various stages of neural circuitry, resulting in increasingly abstract representations through the sensory pathways of the brain. It is these representations that ultimately give rise to sensory perception. Deciphering the messages conveyed in the representations is often referred to as "reading the neural code." True understanding of the neural code requires knowledge of not only the representation of the external world at one particular stage of the neural pathway, but ultimately how sensory information is communicated from the periphery to successive downstream brain structures. Our laboratory has focused on various challenges posed by this problem, some of which I will discuss. In contrast, prosthetic devices designed to augment or replace sensory function rely on the principle of artificially activating neural circuits to induce a desired perception, which we might refer to as "writing the neural code." This requires not only significant challenges in biomaterials and interfaces, but also in knowing precisely what to tell the brain to do. Our laboratory has begun some preliminary work in this direction that I will discuss. Taken together, an understanding of these complexities and others is critical for understanding how information about the outside world is acquired and communicated to downstream brain structures, in relating spatiotemporal patterns of neural activity to sensory perception, and for the development of engineered devices for replacing or augmenting sensory function lost to trauma or disease. Finally, I will try to provide a perspective on the recent activities associated with the White House driven Brain Initiative, which has the mission of advancing Neuroscience research through the development of Neurotechnologies.


Related Links

Additional Information

In Campus Calendar
Yes
Groups

Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB)

Invited Audience
Undergraduate students, Faculty/Staff, Graduate students
Categories
Seminar/Lecture/Colloquium
Keywords
go-neural, go-NeuralEngineering, go_apdc
Status
  • Created By: Floyd Wood
  • Workflow Status: Published
  • Created On: Mar 22, 2016 - 7:39am
  • Last Updated: Apr 13, 2017 - 5:16pm