Full conference details here
Dr. Bikson to speak on April 7th.
Update: Our article on sport performance in athletics features in Nature. Link to news feature.
Complete original paper: pubmed link Full PDF: tDCS_autonomic_Paper
Br J Sports Med. 2013 Feb 27. [Epub ahead of print]
Brain stimulation modulates the autonomic nervous system, rating of perceived exertion and performance during maximal exercise.
Okano AH, Fontes EB, Montenegro RA, Farinatti PD, Cyrino ES, Li LM, Bikson M, Noakes TD.
BACKGROUND: The temporal and insular cortex (TC, IC) have been associated with autonomic nervous system (ANS) control and the awareness of emotional feelings from the body. Evidence shows that the ANS and rating of perceived exertion (RPE) regulate exercise performance. Non-invasive brain stimulation can modulate the cortical area directly beneath the electrode related to ANS and RPE, but it could also affect subcortical areas by connection within the cortico-cortical neural networks. This study evaluated the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the TC on the ANS, RPE and performance during a maximal dynamic exercise.
METHODS: Ten trained cyclists participated in this study (33±9 years; 171.5±5.8 cm; 72.8±9.5 kg; 10-11 training years). After 20-min of receiving either anodal tDCS applied over the left TC (T3) or sham stimulation, subjects completed a maximal incremental cycling exercise test. RPE, heart rate (HR) and R-R intervals (as a measure of ANS function) were recorded continuously throughout the tests. Peak power output (PPO) was recorded at the end of the tests.
RESULTS: With anodal tDCS, PPO improved by ∼4% (anodal tDCS: 313.2±29.9 vs 301.0±19.8 watts: sham tDCS; p=0.043), parasympathetic vagal withdrawal was delayed (anodal tDCS: 147.5±53.3 vs 125.0±35.4 watts: sham tDCS; p=0.041) and HR was reduced at submaximal workloads. RPE also increased more slowly during exercise following anodal tDCS application, but maximal RPE and HR values were not affected by cortical stimulation.
CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that non-invasive brain stimulation over the TC modulates the ANS activity and the sensory perception of effort and exercise performance, indicating that the brain plays a crucial role in the exercise performance regulation.
Schizophr Res. 2015 Aug;166(1-3):362-3. doi: 10.1016/j.schres.2015.05.029.
Targeting negative symptoms in schizophrenia: results from a proof-of-concept trial assessing prefrontal anodic tDCS protocol.
Kurimori M, Shiozawa P, Bikson M, Aboseria M, Cordeiro Q.
Full paper: kurimori2015 Pubmed link
“….In the present study anodic tDCS protocol was found to ameliorate negative symptoms in schizophrenia. The present results need to be taken as hypothesis-driven given the study design. Limitations to this study include its unblinded nature, small sample size, lack of a control group, and short length. Moreover, our results may be overestimated due to intrinsic characteristics such as the placebo effect and Hawthorne effect. However, the current “proof-of-concept” trial is aimed at evaluat- ing preliminary effects of a new experimental tDCS protocol. We under- stand that the trends seen in the completers shall strongly justify a larger double-blind study with better estimation of sample size.”
Arthritis Rheumatol. 2015 Feb;67(2):576-81.
Excitatory and inhibitory brain metabolites as targets of motor cortex transcranial direct current stimulation therapy and predictors of its efficacy in fibromyalgia.
Foerster BR, Nascimento TD, DeBoer M, Bender MA, Rice IC, Truong DQ, Bikson M, Clauw DJ, Zubieta JK, Harris RE, DaSilva AF.
Paper PDF: Foerster_et_al-2015-Arthritis_&_Rheumatology Journal link here
Abstract: OBJECTIVE: Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been shown to improve pain symptoms in fibromyalgia (FM), a central pain syndrome whose underlying mechanisms are not well understood. This study was undertaken to explore the neurochemical action of tDCS in the brain of patients with FM, using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS). METHODS: Twelve patients with FM underwent sham tDCS over the left motor cortex (anode placement) and contralateral supraorbital cortex (cathode placement) for 5 consecutive days, followed by a 7-day washout period and then active tDCS for 5 consecutive days. Clinical pain assessment and 1H-MRS testing were performed at baseline, the week following the sham tDCS trial, and the week following the active tDCS trial. RESULTS: Clinical pain scores decreased significantly between the baseline and active tDCS time points (P = 0.04). Levels of glutamate + glutamine (Glx) in the anterior cingulate were significantly lower at the post–active tDCS assessment compared with the post–sham tDCS assessment (P = 0.013), and the decrease in Glx levels in the thalami between these time points approached significance (P = 0.056). From baseline to the post–sham tDCS assessment, levels of N-acetylaspartate (NAA) in the posterior insula increased significantly (P = 0.015). There was a trend toward increased levels of γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in the anterior insula after active tDCS, compared with baseline (P = 0.064). Baseline anterior cingulate Glx levels correlated significantly with changes in pain score, both for the time period from baseline to sham tDCS (β1 = 1.31, P < 0.001) and for the time period from baseline to active tDCS (β1= 1.87, P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: The present findings suggest that GABA, Glx, and NAA play an important role in the pathophysiology of FM and its modulation by tDCS.
Dr. Marom Bikson is again quoted in a feature in Nature on Brain Stimulation:
Neurostimulation: Bright sparks
by Katherine Bourzac
Nature 531, S6–S8 (03 March 2016) doi:10.1038/531S6a
Published online 02 March 201
transcranial Direct Current Stimulation: personalizing the neuromodulation
A. Cancelli, C. Cottone, M. Parazzini, S. Fiocchi, D. Truong, M.Bikson, F.Tecchio, M. Parazzini, IEEE
Conf Proc IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2015 Aug;2015:234-7. doi: 10.1109/EMBC.2015.7318343.
Full PDF: cancelli2015-2
A technical guide to tDCS, and related non-invasive brain stimulation tools
A. J. Woods, A. Antal, M. Bikson, P.S. Boggio, A.R. Brunoni, P. Celnik, L.G. Cohen, D. Fregni, C.S. Herrmann, E.S. Kappenman, H. Knotkova, D. Liebetanz, C. Miniussi, P.C. Miranda, W. Paulus, A. Priori, D. Reato, C. Stagg, N. Wenderoth, M.A. Nitsche.
Clin Neurophysiol. 2016;127(2):1031-48. doi: 10.1016/j.clinph.2015.11.012.
Full paper: A_technical_guide_to_tDCS_Woods_2016
Abstract: Transcranial electrical stimulation (tES), including transcranial direct and alternating current stimulation (tDCS, tACS) are non-invasive brain stimulation techniques increasingly used for modulation of central nervous system excitability in humans. Here we address methodological issues required for tES application. This review covers technical aspects of tES, as well as applications like exploration of brain physiology, modelling approaches, tES in cognitive neurosciences, and interventional approaches. It aims to help the reader to appropriately design and conduct studies involving these brain stimulation techniques, understand limitations and avoid shortcomings, which might hamper the scientific rigor and potential applications in the clinical domain.
Event website and details here
March 26th, 2016
Read the article here:
Jan 13, 2016 in The Hearty Soul online
“Electroceuticals are Going to Change the World.” Bikson believes they could change the world of medicine. With more research and study, they may just prove to be as effective (if not more) than drugs.
Malcolm Slaney of the Machine Listening Group at Google Research will be discussing the topic of auditory attention. Malcolm is know for his work on automatic speech recognition and auditory perception, among many other things.
When: Friday, January 22nd, at 3pm
Where: ASRC Auditorium
Important: please confirm your attendance by RSVP’ing to neuroccny@gmail.com. RSVP will facilitate your entry into the ASRC building. Feel free to extend invites to relevant parties.
Title: Understanding and using audio attention
Abstract: Understanding auditory attention is key to many tasks. In this talk I would like to summarize several aspects of attention that we have used to better understand how humans use attention in our daily lives. This work extends from top-down and bottom-up models of attention useful for solving the cocktail party problem, to the use of eye-gaze and face-pose information to better understand speech in human-machine and human-human-machine interactions, to new techniques that use EEG (and other brain signals) to infer the direction of auditory attention. The common thread throughout all this work is the use of implicit signals such as auditory saliency, face pose and eye gaze as part of a speech-processing system. I will show algorithms and results from speech recognition, speech understanding, addressee detection, and selecting the desired speech from a complicated auditory environment. This talk will describe work that I did while at Microsoft Research, and efforts at the Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop that were partially supported by Google.
Biography: BSEE, MSEE, and Ph.D., Purdue University. Dr. Malcolm Slaney is a research scientist in the Machine Hearing Group at Google Research. He is a Consulting Professor at Stanford CCRMA, where he has led the Hearing Seminar for more than 20 years, and an Affiliate Faculty in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Washington. He is a (former) Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Signal Processing and IEEE Multimedia Magazine. He has given successful tutorials at ICASSP 1996 and 2009 on “Applications of Psychoacoustics to Signal Processing,” on “Multimedia Information Retrieval” at SIGIR and ICASSP, and “Web-Scale Multimedia Data” at ACM Multimedia 2010. He is a coauthor, with A. C. Kak, of the IEEE book Principles of “Computerized Tomographic Imaging”. This book was republished by SIAM in their “Classics in Applied Mathematics” Series. He is coeditor, with Steven Greenberg, of the book “Computational Models of Auditory Function.” Before joining Microsoft Research, Dr. Slaney has worked at Bell Laboratory, Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, Apple Computer, Interval Research, IBM’s Almaden Research Center, Yahoo! Research, and Microsoft Research. For many years, he has lead the auditory group at the Telluride Neuromorphic (Cognition) Workshop. Dr. Slaney’s recent work is on understanding audio perception and decoding auditory attention from brain signals. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.
Dr. Marom Bikson presented to the IEEE ICES TC95 Subcommittee on “Engineering standards for tDCS”
Tuesday, 12 January 2016
Motorola Solutions, Inc., 8000 West Sunrise Blvd, Plantation, Florida 33322
Watch it here: VIDEO
This episode of TechKnow (Original Air Date: September 27, 2014) explores the applications of “hacking the brain.” For patients suffering from a variety of brain injuries and diseases—from depression to cerebral palsy— there is a sure of interest in an technique called transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS). Dr. Marom Bikson it interviewed as an expert on tDCS technology and its use at home. All features Soterix Medical technology used for neurorehabilitation.
A Protocol for the Use of Remotely-Supervised Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) in Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
Margaret Kasschau 1,2, Kathleen Sherman1,2, Lamia Haider 2, Ariana Frontario 1,2, Michael Shaw1,2, Abhishek Datta 3, Marom Bikson 4, Leigh Charvet1,2
1 Multiple Sclerosis Comprehensive Care Center, Department of Neurology, NYU Langone Medical Center, 2 Department of Neurology, Stony Brook Medicine, 3 Soterix Medical, Inc, 4 Department of Biomedical Engineering, The City College of New York
Watch the video here
Soterix Medical Mini-CT device used here
Neural Engineering Journal Club/Speaker Friday (Dec 18th) at 1 PM. Location is the new CCNY building, 3rd floor conference room Directions here
Brain-Machine Interfaces: The Perception-Action Closed Loop
Dr. José del R. Millán
http://actu.epfl.ch/news/neuroprotheses-l-esprit-aux-commandes/
Future neuroprosthetics will be tightly coupled with the user in such a way that the resulting system can replace and restore impaired upper limb functions because controlled by the same neural signals than their natural counterparts. However, robust and natural interaction of subjects with sophisticated prostheses over long periods of time remains a major challenge. To tackle this challenge we can get inspiration from natural motor control, where goal-directed behavior is dynamically modulated by perceptual feedback resulting from executed actions.
Current brain-computer interfaces (BCI) partly emulate human motor control as they decode cortical correlates of movement parameters –from onset of a movement to directions to instantaneous velocity– in order to generate the sequence of movements for the neuroprosthesis. A closer look, though, shows that motor control results from the combined activity of the cerebral cortex, subcortical areas and spinal cord. This hierarchical organization supports the hypothesis that complex behaviours can be controlled using the low-dimensional output of a BCI in conjunction with intelligent devices in charge to perform low-level commands.
A further component that will facilitate intuitive and natural control of motor neuroprosthetics is the incorporation of rich multimodal feedback and neural correlates of perceptual processes resulting from this feedback. As in natural motor control, these sources of information can dynamically modulate interaction.
Bio: José del R. Millán is the Defitech Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) where he explores the use of brain signals for multimodal interaction and, in particular, the development of non-invasive brain-controlled robots and neuroprostheses. In this multidisciplinary research effort, Dr. Millán is bringing together his pioneering work on the two fields of brain-machine interfaces and adaptive intelligent robotics. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from the Univ. Politècnica de Catalunya (Barcelona, Spain) in 1992. His research on brain-machine interfaces was nominated finalist of the European Descartes Prize 2001 and he has been named Research Leader 2004 by the journal Scientific American for his work on brain-controlled robots. He is the recipient of the IEEE-SMC Nobert Wiener Award 2011 for his seminal and pioneering contributions to non-invasive brain-machine interfaces. Dr. Millán has coordinated a number of European projects on brain-machine interfaces.
UPDATE: Slides from talk Bikson_NAN2015final
Dr. Bikson to speak at the NANS 2015 meeting as part of a special session on NIBS.
Meeting details here Meeting is Dec 10-13 in Las Vegas.
Chair: Felipe Fregni
-Tim Wagner, PhD//Laura Dipietro, PhD
-Leon Morales, MD
-Marom Bikson, PhD
-Dylan Edwards, PhD
Dec 11: Non-Invasive Brain Neurostimulation
-from biophysical foundations to clinical implementation of neurostimulation technologies
-Using qEEG to guide non-invasive brain stimulation
-High-density transcranial direct current stimulation
-Using robotics and other therapies in combination with brain stimulation
Magstim Inside Interviews: 5 Minutes with leading researchers (Professor Marom Bikson)
Link Nov 18, 2015
Marom Bikson, a biomedical engineer at the City College of New York, who studies electricity’s effect on the body, says there are some essential questions scientists must answer before tDCS becomes widespread: what brain region should be stimulated and at what strength; and is stimulation better before, during or after an activity? “We’re in the ‘baby aspirin’ stages of tDCS,” says Bikson. “We have a tremendous amount to learn about how to optimize it.”
J Neurophysiol. 2015 Apr 1;113(7):2801-11. doi: 10.1152/jn.00784.2014. Epub 2015 Feb 11.
Transspinal direct current stimulation immediately modifies motor cortex sensorimotor maps.
Song W, Truong DQ, Bikson M, Martin JH.
Full PDF: SongBiksontsDCS_2015
Abstract: Motor cortex (MCX) motor representation reorganization occurs after injury, learning, and different long-term stimulation paradigms. The neuromodulatory approach of transspinal direct current stimulation (tsDCS) has been used to promote evoked cortical motor responses. In the present study, we used cathodal tsDCS (c-tsDCS) of the rat cervical cord to determine if spinal cord activation can modify the MCX forelimb motor map. We used a finite-element method model based on coregistered high-resolution rat MRI and microcomputed tomography imaging data to predict spinal current density to target stimulation to the caudal cervical enlargement. We examined the effects of cathodal and anodal tsDCS on the H-reflex and c-tsDCS on responses evoked by intracortical microstimulation (ICMS). To determine if cervical c-tsDCS also modified MCX somatic sensory processing, we examined sensory evoked potentials (SEPs) produced by wrist electrical stimulation and induced changes in ongoing activity. Cervical c-tsDCS enhanced the H-reflex, and anodal depressed the H-reflex. Using cathodal stimulation to examine cortical effects, we found that cervical c-tsDCS immediately modified the forelimb MCX motor map, with decreased thresholds and an expanded area. c-tsDCS also increased SEP amplitude in the MCX. The magnitude of changes produced by c-tsDCS were greater on the motor than sensory response. Cervical c-tsDCS more strongly enhanced forelimb than hindlimb motor representation and had no effect on vibrissal representation. The finite-element model indicated current density localized to caudal cervical segments, informing forelimb motor selectivity. Our results suggest that c-tsDCS augments spinal excitability in a spatially selective manner and may improve voluntary motor function through MCX representational plasticity.