Category Archives: Research Highlights
Long-Term Spinal Cord Stimulation Stalls Parkinson’s Symptoms
Researchers at Duke Medicine have shown that continuing spinal cord stimulation appears to produce improvements in symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, and may protect critical neurons from injury or deterioration. The study, performed in rats, is published online Jan. 23, 2014 … Continue reading
Monkeys Use Minds to Move Two Virtual Arms
In a study led by the Nicolelis Lab, monkeys have learned to control the movement of both arms on an avatar using just their brain activity. The findings, published on Nov. 6, 2013, in the journal Science Translational Medicine, advance efforts … Continue reading
Nicolelis Lab Graduate Student to Lead Duke Graduate and Professional Student Council
Amol Yadav, a biomedical engineering PhD student in the Nicolelis Lab has been elected President of the Graduate and Professional Student Council (GPSC) at Duke University. Related Links: Amol Yadav to lead Duke Graduate and Professional Student Council New GPSC … Continue reading
TOUCH AND MOVEMENT NEURONS SHAPE THE BRAIN’S INTERNAL IMAGE OF THE BODY
The brain representation of the body, called the body schema, is susceptible to plasticity. For instance, subjects experiencing a rubber hand illusion develop a sense of ownership of a mannequin hand when they view it being touched while tactile stimuli … Continue reading
FIRST BRAIN-TO-BRAIN INTERFACE ALLOWS TRANSMISSION OF TACTILE AND MOTOR INFORMATION BETWEEN RATS
A brain-to-brain interface (BTBI) enabled a real-time transfer of behaviorally meaningful sensorimotor information between the brains of two rats. In this BTBI, an ‘‘encoder’’ rat performed sensorimotor tasks that required it to select from two choices of tactile or visual … Continue reading
Simultaneous Top-down Modulation of the Primary Somatosensory Cortex and Thalamic Nuclei during Active Tactile Discrimination
The rat somatosensory system contains multiple thalamocortical loops (TCLs) that altogether process, in fundamentally different ways, tactile stimuli delivered passively or actively sampled. To elucidate potential top-down mechanisms that governTCLprocessing in awake, behaving animals, we simultaneously recorded neuronal ensemble activity … Continue reading
Neuroprosthesis Gives Rats the Ability to “Touch” Infrared Light
Sensory neuroprostheses show great potential for alleviating major sensory deficits. It is not known, however, whether such devices can augment the subject’s normal perceptual range. Here we show that adult rats can learn to perceive otherwise invisible infrared light through … Continue reading
Two Nicolelis Lab Alumni Receive Prestigious Research Awards
Former Nicolelis Graduate Student, Dr. Asif Ghazanfar, now an Associate Professor of Psychology at Princeton University, has been named as a recipient of the 2013 Troland Award. The Troland Awards are given each year by the National Academy of Science … Continue reading
Nearly Two Thousand Brain Cells Recorded at One Time
DURHAM, N.C. – A milestone in a neuroscience experiment was announced this week by researchers at the laboratory of Miguel Nicolelis, M.D., PhD, at the Duke University Center for Neuroengineering, with the recording of close to 2,000 brain cells at … Continue reading
Monkeys “Move and Feel” Virtual Objects Using Only Their Brains
In a first-ever demonstration of a two-way interaction between a primate brain and a virtual body, two monkeys trained at the Duke University Center for Neuroengineering learned to employ brain activity alone to move an avatar hand and identify the … Continue reading
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