The rodent whisker system is a prominent experimental subject for the study of sensorimotor integration and active sensing. As a result of improved video-recording technology and progressively better neurophysiological methods, there is now the prospect of precisely analyzing the intact vibrissal sensori motor system. The vibrissae and snout analyzer (ViSA), also noted as BWTT, a widely used algorithm based on computer vision and image processing, has been proven successful for tracking and quantifying rodent sensorimotor behavior, but at a great cost in processing time. Unfortunately, the ViSA processing rate lags far behind the data-generation rate of modern cameras. The acceleration…
The SINs (Smart Implantable Neurostimulators) project is focused on the development of soft- and hardware for the next generation neurostimulators. It is a collaboration between the Dutch Neuroscience Department of the Erasmus Medical Center, Neurasmus B.V., the Delft University of Technology and the Belgian BRAI²N group (Brain Research center Antwerp for Innovative & Interdisciplinary Neuromodulation). Neurostimulation is the electrical stimulation of the nervous system, which may be used for the treatment of many medical conditions. The advantage of electrical stimulation over pharmaceutical means is that the stimulation can be applied at specific locations, limiting the side-effects experienced by the…
The United States National Academy of Engineers has already classified brain emulation as one of the Grand Engineering Challenges. Brain emulation in-silico is a relevant research field for various reasons: • The immediate benefit of brain emulation is the greater understanding of brain behavior by simulations based on biologically plausible models. Depending on the complexity of the model, it can provide insight on single-cell behavior to network dynamics of whole brain regions without the need for in-vivo experiments. This can greatly accelerate brain experimentation and the understanding of the biological mechanisms. • One important eventual goal of the field is…