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SMoRG Students have summer plans
March, 2009 - Two of SMoRG's students have been accepted into highly selective summer traineeships. Stephanie Naufel will be attending the Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates at the Institute for NanoBioTechnology at Johns Hopkins University. Although she is widely traveled, this will be Stephanie's first opportunity to spend time on the East Coast, and she is very excited for the opportunity to be in a traditional bioengineering environment like the one at Johns Hopkins, which is one of the original and still one of the premier institutions in the world. 
Liliana Rincon Gonzalez will also be spending the summer away, studying neurobiology at the Marine Biological Laboratories at Woods Hole. During this intensive 9 week course, Lili will learn to use a variety of tools that are crucial in studying the cellular and molecular structure of the nervous system. Lili has been a member of the laboratory since 2005, and is working on a project to stimulate somatosensory cortex using novel gene-doping techniques.
SMoRG will miss both of these students over the summer, but we wish them both great horizon-broadening experiences!
SMoRG PI receives NIH R01
August, 2008 - SMORG's director, Stephen Helms Tillery, was awarded an R01 to study learning and adaptation in neuroprosthetic systems. Under this grant, the lab will be manipulating the control signals generated for a neurally controlled prosthetic in order to probe the ability of the brain to adapt to challenging changes in task dynamics. A prior collaborator with the laboratory, Remy Wahnoun, has been recruited as a post-doctoral fellow on this project, and Flavio Da Silva as a doctoral student. This grant provides support for 4 years of research in the laboratory.
SMoRG and University of Arizona Awarded Grant for Parkinson's Research
February 13, 2007 - SMORG's director, Stephen Helms Tillery, along with Torsten Falk at the University of Arizona, has been awarded a grant from the Arizona Technology and Research Initiative Fund. The grant, entitled "Selective modulation of basal ganglia excitability: a potential gene therapy for Parkinson's Disease" supports a collaborative effort to study novel therapeutic modalities for this disease, which afflicts approximately 1,000,000 people in the U.S.
February 12, 2007 - SMoRG researchers were recently profiled by the ASU Fulton School of Engineering in a story highlighting ongoing neuroprosthetic research in the lab. Dr. Stephen Helms Tillery, SMoRG Principal Investigator, and Dr. Marco Santello, a co-PI on the NIH-funded research project, shared their thoughts on the significance of the work being done at SMoRG.
About 1.8 million Americans currently live without one or more of their limbs, according to the National Limb Loss Information Center. Until recently, amputees could expect no more than a plastic mold of their arm or leg that requires manual control. Today, the face of prosthetics is changing. Researchers are moving beyond the standard plastic mold to lifelike limbs that operate like an actual part of the body by responding to brain signals.
Helms Tillery and Santello are part of an interdisciplinary team trying to build a state-of- the-art prosthetic hand controlled entirely by brain signals. Their work is part of a National Institutes of Health Bioengineering Partnership project, "Cortical Control of a Dexterous Prosthetic Hand," funded by a recent grant of more than $5 million shared by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Minnesota and Columbia University.
The ASU team will focus on the neurological component of the research by analyzing the types of brain signals used in the operation of a prosthetic device, as well as the sensory signals that a real hand sends back to the brain. "This research is exciting because at the same time we are working to build something that can be of use to disabled individuals, we are also pushing the frontiers of knowledge regarding how the brain controls a complex system like the hand," Helms Tillery says. "The impact of this research is not only academic. What this team is planning to accomplish is one important step on the road to technology with the potential to help thousands of people."
For the original story, link to the Fulton School of Engineering website.
January 25, 2007 - Neuroprosthetic research at SMoRG was recently featured in a story that highlighted ongoing work supported by a recently awarded $5 million NIH grant titled "Cortical Control of a Dexterous Prosthetic Hand." The overall goal of this research is to understand sensory aspects of hand movement and control and will use an immersive virtual reality environemnt to carry out psychophysical experiments involving reaching and grasping with the hand. The position and shape of the hand in the virtual environment will follow that of the test subject, but objects in the virtual world can be manipulated to evoke unexpected sensory reactions. For example, the size of the virtual object can be altered such that hand contact occurs earlier or later than expected by the subject. "We'll know when you use this hand to touch the animated object, and we can process the sensory signals, as if you were actually touching it," said Helms Tillery. "Because the hand is so complicated, what we really want to understand is how these sensory signals work when you touch things."
In the next phase of the research, a robot will present the subject with real objects to grasp. Researchers hope to then be able to monitor the signals that are associated with touching real objects versus the signals involved in touching virtual objects. "We can look at all the signals that are interrelated and then try to tease out the signals that are related to touching objects," Helms Tillery said. Ultimately, the researchers would like to incorporate these signals in building a state-of-the-art prosthetic hand.
Read the full article 
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