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Lecture 5. Towards future systems? Part 1 - Living Wires

Lecture by Prof. Kacy Cullen, University of Pennsylvania.

About Dr. Cullen:

Dr. Kacy Cullen is an Associate Professor of Neurosurgery (with tenure) at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Cullen’s research program operates at the intersection of Neural Engineering, Neurotrauma and Regenerative Medicine. One of the direction's of Dr. Cullen's lab is regenerative medicine & neural tissue engineering – living scaffolds for neuroregeneration; micro-tissue engineering to restore brain circuitry; biological neuromodulation; “biohybrid” neuroprosthetic interfaces; cell function in 3-D microenvironments; in vitro neural interface microsystems.

Living electrodes for linking brains to computers is the topic of this lecture.

Nerve cells modified to respond to light and act as “living electrodes” have been successfully implanted in the brains of animals. The hope is that they will provide a better and longer-lasting way to link brains with computers than conventional electrodes.

Check Dr. Cullen's lab website here:

https://www.med.upenn.edu/cullenlab/