In neurophysiology researches, peripheral stimulation is used along with recordings of neural activities to study the processing of somatosensory signals in the brain. However, limited precision of peripheral stimulation makes it difficult to activate the neuron with millisecond resolution and study its functional properties in this scale. Also, tissue/receptor damage that could occur in some e...

The whisker system of rodents is an excellent model to study peripherally evoked neural activity in the brain. Discrete neural modules represent each whisker in the somatosensory cortex ("barrels"), thalamus ("barreloids"), and brain stem ("barrelettes"). Stimulation of a single whisker evokes neural activity sequentially in its corresponding barrelette, barreloid, and barrel. Conventional opti...

There are currently two techniques to manipulate brain function non-invasively: transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). These brain stimulation techniques work to cause long-term change within the brain. We have been combining noninvasive brain stimulation with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the plasticity of brain...

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has evolved into a method widely used to map neural activation in the human brain. fMRI is a method for recording blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signals. These signals change with local cerebral blood flow coupled to neural activity. However, the relationship between BOLD signals and neural function is poorly understood and requires the developm...

estimating the elbow angle using shoulder data is very important and valuable in functional electrical stimulation (fes) systems which can be useful in assisting c5/c6 sci patients. much research has been conducted based on the elbow-shoulder synergies. the aim of this study was the online estimation of elbow flexion/extension angle from the upper arm acceleration signals during adls. for this,...

Neurological diseases may reduce Tibialis Anterior (TA) muscle recruitment capacity causing gait disorders, such as drop foot (DF). The majority of DF patients still retain excitable nerves and muscles which makes Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) an adequate technique to restore lost mobility. Recent studies suggest the need for developing personalized assist-as-needed control strategies...

We study neural connectivity in cultures of rat hippocampal neurons. We measure the neurons’ response to an electric stimulation for gradual lower connectivity, and characterize the size of the giant cluster in the network. The connectivity undergoes a percolation transition described by the critical exponent β ≃ 0.65. We use a theoretic approach based on bond–percolation on a graph to describe...

The highly convoluted and cytoarchitectonically diverse inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) of humans is known to be critically involved in a wide range of complex operations including speech and language processing. The neural circuitry that underlies these operations is not fully understood. We hypothesized that this neural circuitry includes functional connections within and between the three major...