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Date:  Mon, July 23, 2018
Time:  10:00am-11:00am
Location:  Holmes Hall 389
Speaker:  Dr. Yuki Hayashida, Osaka University

Abstract:

It has long been suggested that intra-cortical microstimulation is feasible for artificially restoring a certain level of visual, auditory or tactile sensation, by directly exciting the target neurons in the cerebrum. Previous psychophysical as well as behavioral studies on the sensory perception induced by such stimuli in human/non-human primates provided truly invaluable information. However, the underlying spatio-temporal neural responses to the microstimulation, and the quantitative relationship between the stimulus parameters and the responses, remained least understood even on experimental animals. Therefore, we have been investigating spatio-temporal properties of the stimulus-evoked neural responses in the rodent visual cortices by utilizing the millisecond-channel microstimulation system for animal experiments. The system is designed to be capable of managing more than 4000 channels of stimulating electrodes. We verified that this prototype system can inject charge-balanced biphasic current pulses through metal-based microelectrodes in the rat visual cortex in vivo, and can induce neuronal excitations in a reliable manner.

About the Speaker:

Yuki Hayashida received his PhD in Information Engineering from Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan in 1998. After graduation, he experienced a postdoctoral research for two years in Japan, and then a postdoctoral fellow for three years in the University of California at Davis in the United States. He was appointed as Associate Professors of Graduate school of Science and Technology in Kumamoto University in Japan from 2004 to 2010, and then of Graduate school of Engineering in Osaka University from 2011. His research interests cover intra-cortical visual prostheses, carbon-nanotube-based neural electrodes, and basic optical and electrical physiologies in vivo and in vitro.