Lecture Details

Controlling Abnormal Network Dynamics with Optogenetics
Professor Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson is Professor of Neural Interfaces and a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow at the Biosciences Institute, Newcastle University. His research uses electrophysiological techniques in animals, healthy volunteers and patients to ask fundamental neuroscience questions around motor control, learning, sleep and oscillatory brain dynamics. This basic research informs our development of closed-loop neural interface technologies for the brain, spinal cord and muscles, with applications in the treatment of stroke, spinal cord injury and epilepsy. His research is funded by Wellcome, MRC and EPSRC.

Controlling Abnormal Network Dynamics with Optogenetics (CANDO) is a multidisciplinary collaboration to develop next-generation brain stimulation technologies. The CANDO therapy combines an optogenetic gene therapy to render neurons light-sensitive, and an implant that can sense electrical activity and deliver continuous 'closed-loop' optical stimulation. I will present data from in silico computer models, in vitro brain slice preparations, and in vivo experiments to show how closed-loop optogenetics can be used to alter the dynamics of brain networks, for example to boost or suppress oscillations at different frequencies or reduce the duration of seizures. In addition, I will describe work being done by the CANDO team to translate this approach towards a therapy suitable for human use.