Browse wide-ranging research at the frontiers of neuroscience supported by Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute grants, awards, and training fellowships.
Projects
Restoring vision with epiretinal prostheses
Millions of people are blind, yet we still don’t have the technology to satisfactorily restore vision. I aim to create a prosthetic device to do so. This device can be implanted in the eyes of a blind patient, resting on a tissue layer called the retina.
Improving BCI generalizability with multi-task modeling and autocalibration
Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are systems that enable using neural activity to control and interact with external devices. For people who lose the ability to move or speak due to injury or disease, BCIs provide a potential avenue to restore this loss of function.
Understanding a complete neural computation in the primate visual system
Understanding the brain requires understanding how the neurons that constitute it perform computations, and how those computations relate to human behavior.
Investigation of synapse formation by novel nanoscale imaging techniques
Synaptic junctions linking individual neurons constitute the fundamental building blocks of our brain. Understanding their inner working is crucial to unravel the mechanisms by which our brain processes information. However, imaging structures at a relevant sub-synaptic level is challenging and has often hampered advances in neuroscience.
Enabling cell-based therapy of spinal cord injury through injectable hydrogels
Spinal cord injury (SCI) causes permanent damage to about 12,000 new patients in the US each year, primarily young adults. A common result of SCI is paralysis, and unfortunately, less than 1% of SCI patients have full neurological recovery by the time of hospital discharge.
Discovering new volitionally-controllable neural degrees-of-freedom for neural prostheses
A top priority for people with paralysis is reach and grasp ability. Technologies such as robotic arm prostheses or electrically stimulating paralyzed muscles can meet this need. Existing methods rely on the remaining muscles, are unintuitive and require laborious sequences of simple commands. Reading out a patient’s desired movement directly from their brain could overcome these limitations.
Instrumenting the nervous system at single-cell resolution
Dr. Dante Muratore's goal is to design the next generation of neural interfaces that allow single-cell resolution when communicating with the nervous system. To achieve this, he has conceived a new way of reading information from the neural system.
Engineering nanoscale optical transducers of mechanical signals in the nervous system
Communication between cells in the nervous system regulates the senses, memory, and information processing. Using electrical and biochemical sensors, such as patch clamps, voltage-sensitive dyes, and calcium-sensitive dyes, scientists have mapped with extraordinary detail the interactions of the nervous system.
Characterizing large-scale neural circuit dynamics over long-term recordings
Neural circuits can exhibit remarkable stability (e.g., when supporting long-term memory) as well as flexibility (e.g., when supporting rapid learning).
Dissecting curious exploration with self-supervised machine learning
What are the principles that guide curiosity-based exploration? What is the neural circuitry that implements curiosity? How can insights related to the phenomenon of curiosity improve the education and capabilities of humans and artificially intelligent agents? To address these questions, Isaac Kauvar will take an interdisciplinary approach — positioned at the intersection of computer science, neuroscience, and psychology.
Genetic access of cell types using viral vectors
Multicellular organisms consist of numerous cell types with specialized biological functions. To understand such complex biological systems, genetic access to each cell type is needed for functional analysis and manipulations.