Joint INC-IEM Center for Advanced Neurological Engineering

Co-Directors:

The mission of the UCSD Center for Advanced Neurological Engineering (CANE) is to apply the abundant expertise in neural engineering and computation within the San Diego professional community to problems in translating basic scientific knowledge and engineering capabilities into improved diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of neurological diseases and pathology. The goals of the Center are to clarify neuropathogenic processes, to create and apply innovative technology for advanced neuroscience research, and to develop novel methods and strategies for improving prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of neurological diseases and injuries.

By synergizing the activities of the Institute of Engineering in Medicine (IEM) and the Institute of Neural Computation (INC), CANE will bring together scientists, engineers, and clinicians in the UCSD Health Sciences, Jacobs School of Engineering, Division of Biological Sciences, and other Units in UCSD, as well as the Salk Institute and other neighboring research institutes, and industrial partners. CANE scientists already have a strong track record of interdisciplinary collaboration in neuroscience, engineering, computation, and clinical translation. CANE will encourage further research and development collaborations in these directions.

In particular, the Center will focus on advanced, non-invasive approaches to recording and modeling brain activities and body functions, including and combining electroencephalographic (EEG), electromyographic (EMG), behavioral, and physiological measures. Emerging microelectronic technologies allow the development of human non-invasive, high-density, multimodal, mobile brain/body imaging (MoBI) recording and analyses, and implantable applications of neurological closed-loop systems. Such approaches will enable the wireless transmission of changes in a patient's current healthstatus and needs to health providers, enabling noninvasive, personalized remote healthcare, real-time phenotyping, and longitudinal followup.


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The Center will also develop and apply powerful mathematical approaches to analyzing and modeling the abundant resulting information flow and will create smart databases interfaced to online data mining, allowing translation of ongoing advances of neuroscience into advances in health care in clinical, workplace, and home-based health care environments. Advanced statistical methods including independent component analysis (ICA) will be employed to model relevant aspects of the data. The information will be organized in a user-friendly way to increase temporal and spatial resolution of data analysis, to maximize the clinical utility of the results, to enable high-throughput feedback to the subject, and to reduce overall healthcare costs. 

Combined, the new recording and analysis methods may facilitate diagnosis, monitoring of treatment efficacy, and prediction of outcome for a variety of neurological diseases such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer disease, Huntington disease, Down syndrome, ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), cerebral palsy, sleep disorders, stroke, traumatic brain injury, and many others.

CANE will also facilitate research training of the next-generation scientists, engineers, and physicians. Advanced trainees will be invited to participate in CANE-sponsored professional courses, workshops, and conferences. CANE will assist early-stage researchers in gaining entry into the research environment, and will help its affiliated laboratories to recruit researchers.