CMU Neural Engineering Virtual Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Tim Denison, Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies, Oxford University; MRC Investigator
Dr. Joram J. van Rheede, Senior Postdoctoral Neuroengineer, Oxford University
Abstract: Implantable deep brain stimulation devices are an effective precision medicine treatment for neurological conditions, targeting pathological dynamics in brain networks. Like the rest of our physiological functioning, brain activity is profoundly influenced by sleep and circadian rhythms, but current brain stimulation devices do not take this into account. This is particularly important as biological rhythms interact with neurological disease, leading to predictable changes in disease symptoms and biomarkers, while sleep and circadian rhythm disruption is increasingly understood to be a causal factor in neurodegenerative as well as psychiatric disorders. Understanding the changes in pathological brain dynamics over the diurnal cycle will therefore not only allow for optimisation of therapy for different brain states and different times of day, but also pave the way for bioelectronic therapy ‘prescriptions’ that directly target sleep and circadian rhythm disruption. We will motivate our work by providing a characterization of predictable neural biomarker fluctuations in neurodegenerative and psychiatric conditions during active deep brain stimulation, and show that brain stimulation can influence patient sleep/wake rhythms. Next, we will describe the development of the DyNeuMo brain stimulation device, a research platform technology that has the capacity to change its stimulation programme according to time of day and behavioural state, which has now been implanted in several human clinical trials.
About the Speaker: Professor Tim Denison holds a joint appointment in Engineering Science and Clinical Neurosciences at Oxford, where he explores the fundamentals of physiologic closed-loop systems. Prior to that, Tim was a Technical Fellow at Medtronic PLC and Vice President of Research & Core Technology for the Restorative Therapies Group, where he helped oversee the design of next generation neural interface and algorithm technologies for the treatment of chronic neurological disease. In 2012, he was awarded membership to the Bakken Society, Medtronic’s highest technical and scientific honor, and in 2014 he was awarded the Wallin leadership award, becoming only the second person in Medtronic history to receive both awards. In 2015, he was elected to be a Fellow of AIMBE. Tim received an A.B. in Physics from The University of Chicago, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from MIT. He recently completed his MBA and was named a Wallman Scholar at The University of Chicago. Dr. Joram J. van Rheede is a Senior Postdoctoral Neuroengineer in the Bioelectronics lab in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and the MRC Brain Network Dynamics Unit at the University of Oxford. Research interests include: characterising the interaction of sleep/wake cycles and circadian rhythms with biomarkers and symptoms of neurological and psychiatric conditions, using data from human patients implanted with brain stimulation devices; and the testing and refinement of closed-loop neuromodulation strategies to optimise therapy for sleep and circadian rhythms, using in silico, animal model and human clinical research.