An Ecosystem of Technology and Protocols for Adaptive Neuromodulation Research in Humans

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Project Summary/Abstract Neurological and psychiatric disorders affect millions of people in the United States and worldwide, and produce a third of all health care costs. Recent research has produced encouraging evidence that adaptive neuromodulation can induce nervous system plasticity that produces long-lasting improvements in certain neurological disorders such as stroke. At the same time, it is becoming increasingly clear that the technologies that support these demonstrations remain painfully inadequate and inaccessible for both research and clinical application: current non-invasive technologies are typically imprecise; and current invasive technologies, which are more precise, are currently only available with serious restrictions for human use. Moreover, all of the few existing neuromodulation platforms for human use require substantial expertise in diverse areas of engineering, physiology, and regulatory domains that is not available to most groups. This lack of availability of sufficiently capable and readily useable neuromodulation technologies greatly impedes the development, application, and optimization of new adaptive protocols for improving symptoms of devastating neurological and psychiatric disorders. The purpose of the project proposed here is to address this critical issue by developing, validating, and widely sharing with the community an easy-to-use adaptive neuromodulation ecosystem (comprised of technology and protocols) that is optimized for the needs of invasive basic and clinical research. We will validate this ecosystem in a canine model, and disseminate it with appropriate documentation to other scientists and clinicians through three project-related test sites and three workshops. In accord with this objective, we will: 1. Develop a general-purpose hardware/software neuromodulation platform for invasive neuromodulation research 2. Develop and validate an ecosystem for adaptive neuromodulation research and clinical application 3. Disseminate this ecosystem of technologies and protocols Achieving these three aims will create, validate, and disseminate the first comprehensive ecosystem that facilitates the conception, development, and clinical application of invasive adaptive neuromodulation protocols. We expect that the availability of this ecosystem will greatly increase activities in basic and clinical neuromodulation research that will lead to new understanding of the neural underpinnings of normal and abnormal function and will thereby accelerate the development of novel adaptive neuromodulation protocols to improve treatment for many devastating neurological disorders.