Engineering Brain Health
Psychiatric and neurological disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), chronic pain, and age-related neurodegeneration, are devastating health conditions that affect a large portion of the population. Unfortunately, successful treatment of these disorders has been hampered by the absence of neurological interventions that can precisely target the parts of the nervous system that are affected by disease. However, the past decade has witnessed major technological advances in neuroscience, genetics and engineering that pave the way for new and specific treatment approaches. Here we take a state-of-the-science approach to translate our understanding of neural circuits underlying disease into a cutting-edge, implantable, and wireless neuroprosthetic “pacemaker” that will restore normal function in dysregulated brain circuits. This wireless, closed-loop optogenetic stimulator (CLOPS) will detect aberrant hyperactivity in animal models of psychiatric disorders and normalize this activity with targeted activation specific brain circuits and cells. This interdisciplinary project has the potential to yield a game-changing advance over current therapeutic approaches for psychiatric and neurological disease, because current therapies neither directly interface with brain tissue nor do they dynamically adapt the therapeutic intervention to an individual’s brain activity.