[BIC-announce] FW: Seminar announcement - Cognitive Control Signals for Neural Prosthetics

[Jennifer Chew, Ms.]

FORWARDING ON BEHALF OF DR. TAL ARBEL.  PLS. SEE HER MESSAGE BELOW.
Jennifer 

"I strongly encourage everyone to come hear about the exciting new
research performed by one of our latest hires:" 

CIM SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENT:


Cognitive Control Signals for Neural Prosthetics Prof. Sam Mussalam
Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering McGill University

Tuesday, Feb. 27
11:00-12:00pm
CIM Seminar room - McConnell Engineering room 437

*Brief Overview*

An important question in neural prosthetics research is what parameters
can be decoded from the brain and used for prosthetic applications. Work
from other labs has focused on decoding movement trajectories from
signals recorded from the motor cortex. In this talk, I will discuss an
alternative approach that uses cognitive signals related to motor plans
as opposed to motor execution. I will show preliminary evidence that
neurons in the parietal cortex encode the amplitude and depth of an
impending reach and discuss how these signals can be used for prosthetic
control. I will also propose that neurons exist in the PPC that support
the existence of a forward model. These neurons are not only tuned in
space, but also in time and the temporal evolution of their firing rate
can predict continuous trajectories. Interestingly, neurons were also
found to encode the expected value, type or probability of reward. 
.Multi-neuron recordings encoding the direction of a reach goal were
made from the parietal cortex and used in a 'brain control' task' to
control a cursor on a computer screen in real time. We used variable
reward schedules to bias the tuning and sensorimotor processing of
neurons and optimized the monkey's performance in the brain control
trials. These results indicate that brain activity related to cognitive
variables can be a viable source of signals for the control of a neural
prosthetic.


*Brief Biography for Sam Musallam*

Sam obtained his Bachelor of Science (honours) from the University of
Toronto (UT) in Physics and Math. In 1995, he joined the department of
Biomedical Engineering at UT and the lab of David Tomlinson and
completed his Masters modeling the translational vestibulo-ocular
reflex. In 1997, he spent a year in Greece working for the European
Union building web applications. In 1998, he started his PhD in the
departments of Physiology and BME again with David Tomlinson. He studied
the signal processing performed by the vestibular nucleus (VN) during
combined linear and rotational motion. In 2001, he joined the lab of Dr.

Richard Andersen at Caltech for his post-doctoral training. He headed
the development of a neural prosthetic that can ultimately control arm
movements in paralyzed patients. The goal of this project was to extract
and decode neural signals from the parietal cortex of monkeys while they
simply thought about completing a reach movement. At McGill, he plans on
continuing the development of cognitive neural prosthetics with the aim
of restoring natural behaviour to paralyzed patients.

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Tal Arbel, Assistant Professor
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering		Tel. (514)
398-8204
Centre for Intelligent Machines				Fax. (514)
398-7348
McConnell Engineering Building, room 425	                    
McGill University
arbel at cim.mcgill.ca
3480 University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 2A7
http://www.cim.mcgill.ca/~arbel
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