About The Workshop

Thank you to one of our readers for cluing us in about the wonders of MNE.

One thousand electrodes, transmitted by a device the size of a quarter, are enough for college student Noland Arbaugh to play digital chess again after a lake accident left him paralyzed from the shou...

🧠 A current pulse that activates one cortical column in a mouse does not produce the same perceptual report in a human BCI user. Three species, three different outcomes from the same waveform. Closing that translation gap is what BRIDGE-STIM 2027 is built to do. 📅 NSF (CBET) has funded BRIDGE-STIM 2027 (Award #2624028) for May 17-19, 2027 at the University of Pittsburgh. The workshop assembles experimentalists running intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) in mice, non-human primates, and humans, with the explicit goal of pairing rodent, NHP, and human datasets in side-by-side talks rather than parallel sessions. ⚡ The scientific problem is concrete. Mouse cortex responds to ICMS in ways NHP cortex does not, which in turn does not always predict what a paralyzed human BCI user perceives during a clinical somatosensory restoration trial. This cross-species translation gap is the explicit framing of our recent JNE perspective (Kozai, Hooks, Vazquez, Gharbawie, Huang, Gaunt and colleagues, "Solving the Problem of Inception," JNE 2026, https://lnkd.in/eUTQuXpc), which proposes paired forward (animal-to-human) and reverse (human-to-animal) loops linking circuit experiments, computational models, and human perceptual reports. BRIDGE-STIM 2027 operationalizes that framework with the community in one room. 🔬 A single lab or single paper cannot align electrode geometry, waveform parameters, behavioral readouts, and data-sharing conventions across mouse, NHP, and human preparations. That alignment requires the community to assemble, present comparable data formats, and negotiate standards, which is what this workshop format provides. 🤝 Co-organized with Robert Gaunt (human BCI), Alberto Vazquez (cortical hemodynamics), Chengcheng Huang (computational neuroscience), Omar El Gharbawie (NHP sensorimotor cortex), and Mac Hooks (mouse cortical circuits), Maria Dadarlat (Purdue), Emily Graczyk (CWRU), & Charles Greenspon (UChicago) through UP NExT (University of Pittsburgh Neural Engineering Cross-Translation). 💰 Federal support comes from NSF CBET (Award #2624028). Conference grants are the mechanism that lets a research community physically assemble to align electrode geometry, waveform parameters, behavioral readouts, and data-sharing conventions across labs, which neither industry nor private foundations reliably underwrite at this scale. 📅 Open to faculty, staff, and trainees. Trainee participation is a primary design choice, because cross-species ICMS expertise has to be transmitted while the senior generation is still active in the field. Registration opens soon. 🔗 Schedule, speakers, and poster session details will be posted soon at https://stim.bioniclab.org #Neuroscience #BrainComputerInterface #ICMS #NeuralEngineering #UPNExT #SensorimotorBCI

We can stimulate the brain with microscale precision. We still don't know what we're writing 📄 Our new perspective is out in the Journal of Neural Engineering today: "Solving the Problem of Inception: a cross-species perspective on strategies for a mechanistic refinement of intracortical microstimulation." ⚡ The promise of ICMS is straightforward: deliver electrical pulses directly to cortex, restore touch to a paralyzed hand, restore vision to a blind patient. The fundamental challenge is not the electrode. It's that we cannot reliably predict whether a given stimulation pattern will produce a tingle, pressure, a buzz, or nothing coherent at all. The gap between the electrode and the percept is what we call the problem of inception. 🔄 The framework we propose is bidirectional. Reverse translation takes structured human perceptual reports (why does 100 Hz feel like pressure but 20 Hz feel like a tingle?) and uses them to drive hypothesis-testing in rodents and NHPs, mapping the cell types, layers, and circuit motifs responsible. Forward translation takes those mechanistic insights and uses them to rationally redesign the next stimulation protocol for humans. Computational modeling runs continuously between both directions, deriving interspecies transfer functions and predicting responses to untested parameters. 🧠 Cross-species differences in cortical architecture are not obstacles. They are informative constraints on theory. Mouse cortex is approximately 1 mm thick; human cortex is approximately 2-3 mm. Identical electrode geometries won't recruit comparable populations. But laminar density gradients, excitatory-inhibitory motifs, and core cell types are broadly conserved, and understanding exactly where conservation ends and divergence begins is itself the science. 🤝 We also take seriously something the field has largely avoided: the research ethics of participants who function, over years of implanted device use, as informal co-designers. Their perceptual reports anchor the computational models. Their emotional investment in outcomes makes those reports simultaneously more informed and harder to treat as independent observations. That tension deserves explicit frameworks. 🔬 The broader reach goes beyond sensory restoration. ICMS activates tissue within tens of microns of the electrode tip, a resolution inaccessible to DBS (1-3 mm activation volumes), focused ultrasound, or TMS. That precision positions ICMS as a benchmark for characterizing the circuit-level mechanisms of every neuromodulation approach we use clinically. 🙏 Grateful to an exceptional team spanning neural engineering, systems neuroscience, computational modeling, ethics, and clinical science across Pitt, CWRU, & CMU. This is exactly the kind of cross-school, cross-disciplinary science UP NExT at Pitt was built to support Open access: https://lnkd.in/eUTQuXpc #NeuralEngineering #BrainComputerInterface #Neuroscience #ICMS #SensoryProsthetics #TranslationalNeuroscience