3rd Place Winner of the BCI Award 2019: Closed-loop BCI for treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders

Описание: Neuropsychiatric disorders such as major depression are a leading cause of disability worldwide. Currently, about 20-30% of major depression patients are not responsive to any available treatments. This is about 5 million people in the US alone, who could greatly benefit from a novel treatment. Motivated by the view that neuropsychiatric disorders are signs of abnormal brain network activity, we aim to provide a new treatment in the form of a novel closed-loop BCI that aims to normalize these brain activity patterns using electrical stimulation.

To do so, we take a principled engineering approach to designing this brain-computer interface in our lab. Our aim is to design a BCI that can decide in real time how to stimulate the brain guided by novel decoders that track a patient’s mood symptoms from their brain activity. The goal of the BCI is to alleviate mood symptoms by applying the stimulation at the right time, with the right amount, and in a manner that is precisely tailored to the patient’s needs.

This team won the 3rd place of the BCI Award 2019. Learn more: https://www.bci-award.com/2019

Developing a closed-loop brain-computer interface for treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders using electrical brain stimulation
Yuxiao Yang1, Omid G. Sani1, Morgan B. Lee2,3,4, Heather E. Dawes2,3,4, Edward F. Chang2,3,4, Maryam M. Shanechi1,5


1 Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering, Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California, USA.
2 Department of Neurological Surgery, University of California, USA.
3 Weill Institute for Neuroscience, University of California, San Francisco, USA.
4 Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience, University of California, San Francisco, USA.
5 Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of Southern California, USA.