Natwi - Asplund & Okkesim

Session topic: Bioelectronic Systems

Sükrü Okkesim, abstract:

Spike Detection and a Method for Polytrodes

The accurate detection of neuronal activity is a vital step for many neuroscientific studies involving electrophysiologic in vivo recordings. A huge sum of studies about the activity of neurons recorded intracellularly have given well sufficient information related to a neuron and characteristic shape of its spike. However, to understand the complex brain activity, recording of large populations of neurons is required instead of detecting spikes of a single-cell in isolation. In recent years, the improvement of microelectrode array technology has set up key advances for the manufacture and get together of a wide assortment of neural probe systems that have made possible large-scale recording from a large group of neurons in various brain areas.

In the presentation, the basic steps of spike detection mostly known as Spike Sorting will be defined. Then by introducing Polythrodes, an issue called duplication : Multiple Events Detection will be discussed and finally some useful methods addressing this issue will be introduced.

Maria Asplund, abstract:

The stimulating idea of bioelectronic medicine – from science fiction to science fact

Ever since Galvani’s first discovery of bioelectricity as a “force of life”, scientist have dreamed of using electrical stimulation as a universal tool for healing. This is in many ways already a dream-come-true. Cardiac pacemakers have saved lives on a daily basis since the 1960’ies, thanks to electrical stimulation in the human heart. Furthermore, over the last 50 years we have learnt how to make better implantable devices that more precisely can administer the electrical impulses, harvest signals allowing feedback, or allowing the connection of external devices with direct nerve control.

In my talk I will outline how my research contributes to this topic, and enable electrical stimulation for therapy and rehabilitation within new application fields. I will exemplify this by three research lines: 1) showing how flexible microtechnology for intra-cortical neural interfaces can contribute to future systems for visual restoration; 2) how similar bioelectronic concepts can be of interest for regenerative therapy and 3) how also non-invasive bioelectronic applications may benefit from the generated knowledge and technological advancements driven by implantable neurotechnology.