Frontiers of Healthcare Conference

Neurotechnology:

From the Lab to Everyday Life.

Conference Description

The conference is directed toward a professional audience and pairs scientist/practitioners with users of their technology for a discussion of future directions in neuroscience. Current research in the neurosciences is obliterating boundaries between biology and technology, effecting collaborations with a range of other disciplines from tissue engineering to orthopaedics, and bridging gulfs between what can be imagined and what can become medical reality.

The format for the 2008 conference includes panelists from several disciplines working with individuals in rehabilitative and restorative functioning that has been impacted by Neurotechnology. Brown neuroscientists have helped break ground on several fronts in this effort. Among them is Dr. John Donoghue, whose multidisciplinary team has developed and is testing the possibilities of a computer chip that can be implanted in the brain to translate the will to move into the movement itself. This brain decoder, known as BrainGate, can enable an individual who is unable to use his limbs to move a computer cursor on a screen using only his thoughts, and it promises far more sophisticated applications, such as moving a robotic device or limb.

This program is approved for AMA PRA Category 1 CreditsTM