First patient data collected at Mayo Clinic! 5 April 2019 – Posted in: news – Tags: 2019, Active electrode, april, Biomedical, biomedical engineering, Brain, Cagdas Topcu, Doctoral, early stage researcher, ECoG, Epilepsy, Gdansk University of Technology, Mayo Clinic, Memory, Michal Kucewicz, neurology, Neuroscience, PhD, Politechnika, Rochester, Science, signal processing, USA, Verbal

The first quarter of 2019 is marked with a major milestone for our BME lab. We collected behavioral and electrophysiological recordings from 128 channels of multiple electrodes implanted in three patients when they were performing computer tasks with tracking their eye movements. To our knowledge this is the first such recording with EEG signals collected directly from the patient brain during performance of verbal memory and other tasks combined with high-accuracy estimation of the pupil size and gaze position.

We know from our previous findings that both the invasive signals from the brain as well as the non-invasive measures taken from the eye can provide useful information about the processes of creating, holding and recalling memory. Our hypothesis is that combining these two sources will enable us to very reliably predict memory performance and figure out where, when, and how to improve it using brain stimulation techniques and help other patients with dementia or brain injuries.

This is the main driving force for us as researchers… and for the participating patients too, it turns out! The photograph was actually taken per request of the patient himself, who was so glad to contribute data to our research that he wanted to have this moment commemorated.

Every patient whom we worked with so far had either someone in the family who was suffering from a memory disorder or just simply thought it was an important cause to help with. We are wholeheartedly grateful to the patients, their families and all other supporters for the opportunity to serve in this research.