Past Event: Oden Institute Seminar

Neuromodulatory Control: Personalizing electrical stimulation for medical therapeutics

Joshua Chang, Assistant Professor, Neurology and Population Health, Dell Medical School.

Abstract

The use of electrical stimulation as a therapeutic modality is rapidly expanding its reach into all disciplines in medicine. These electroceuticals are being used to combat everything from Parkinsonian tremors, epilepsy to depression and inflammatory bowel disease. Compared to the field of pharmaceuticals where much is known about the pharmacodynamics and kinetics of molecular compounds, very little is known in this field regarding the electrical dynamics and kinetics of complex neurological networks. Most research done in this field has been through the use of rudimentary rectangular biphasic stimulus waveforms. In this talk, I will review some of the computational strategies that have been used to optimize the shape of the stimulus waveform, and I will discuss some potential ideas for future exploration. Bio: Joshua Chang is an assistant professor of the Departments of Neurology and Population Health at Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin. He received his B.S. and M.Eng at MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, with a focusing on signal processing, control theory and artificial intelligence. After working a couple years as a software engineer and IT consultant, he pursued an MD/PhD at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he completed his thesis in Quantitative Health Sciences under the supervision of Dr. David Paydarfar in the design and development of evolutionary algorithms to optimize stimulus waveforms for implantable electrical devices. He continues his research here as an investigator of the Clayton Foundation for Research.