Electrical Engineering Department
University of California, Los Angeles
AbstractWe are approaching cognitive disaster. Alzheimer’s disease affects over 5 million people in the US, with the cost of care exceeding sales of Google. Another 5 million live with long-term disability as a result of traumatic brain injury, and there are millions with epilepsy. Many patients with these conditions are impaired by memory deficits. Drug therapy has failed. The development of memory restoration devices has become a major medical and social priority.
Medial temporal lobe is a brain region that is related to memory function. Direct manipulation of this circuitry offers a unique opportunity to influence learning and memory performance. While much progress has been made in generating brain-machine interface and restoring limb movement, it is much more difficult to restore memories, especially declarative memories. Fueled by insights into single neurons that support unique memory traces in human patients, memory enhancement using stimulation of the entorhinal area, computational modeling, and active collaboration with medical doctors, I will discuss a leading-edge engineering technology that can make the fulfillment of memory restoration highly likely.
BioDejan Marković is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles and currently on sabbatical leave at Stanford University. He is also affiliated with UCLA Bioengineering Department as a co-chair of the Neuroengineering field. He completed the Ph.D. degree in 2006 at the University of California, Berkeley, for which he was awarded 2007 David J. Sakrison Memorial Prize. His current research is focused on integrated circuits for emerging radio and healthcare systems, programmable ICs, design with post-CMOS devices, optimization methods and CAD flows. Dr. Marković is a co-founder of Flex Logix, a semiconductor IP startup. He received an NSF CAREER Award in 2009. In 2010, he was a co-recipient of ISSCC Jack Raper Award for Outstanding Technology Directions and a winner of the DAC/ISSCC Student Design Contest.
