News

This page began as a press page for my intracranial research. I then added various news items occasionally but have not updated it frequently nor recently. In any case, thanks for your interest! ~n

Recent Press, for my autism work, selected from about 100 press articles:

TechCrunch
WIRED
CBS TV
Economic Times
Autism Speaks – UN Keynote
MedTech
Autism Speaks – about Brain Power
MIT Sloan
Huffington Post
FPLA Conference feature
FPLA Conference PDF
Google Glass Journal
Mozzaz Blog
LemonGreenTea Blogspot
Autism Society Philippines
Economic Times
Autism Daily Newscast
Delhi Daily News
QuickDocs
MSN

•   News article in Science about the President’s new brain initiative – used my image for the story.   •

[March 01, 2013]   In response to the massive new Brain Activity Map initiative that President Obama mentioned in his State of the Union speech, Science wrote an article and contacted me directly to ask if they could use one of my images. I was super happy when I saw the article: they had devoted 1/3 of a page in the journal to it! Click if you want to see the JPG or PDF versions.





The image is of an X-ray of a patient with electrodes implanted inside his skull (directly on the brain surface). The patient had the electrodes implanted so that brain surgeons could record the normal and abnormal electrical activity generated by his brain, in order to pinpoint the location of the tissue causing his epileptic seizures. This is a clinically accepted, if rare, procedure. Using data from the electrodes, surgeons then remove or ablate the diseased part of the brain, and the patient can be cured! As mentioned on the ICE page, I have the fortune of recording data from such patients while they think or talk, to guide my research.

Please Use This Image!     I am happy that many people seem to like it (I have had other requests), and want to get it out there. Please contact me and I will give you permission for your project so long as you credit me and link to this web site. Click the image icon below for a full-sized version (large), or download it as a zip file.

An important disclaimer about the image: in accordance with HIPAA privacy laws, the face that is visible is not actually the face of the original patient. I spliced together two images. The triangle containing the face, jaw bones and most of the neck vertebrae is from a separate x-ray and not from the patient. All the rest of the image, including the head and lower neck, is the actual original x-ray image from the patient. This is the part that contains all the electrodes and the wires leading away from the electrodes, and therefore is the scientifically interesting part. Because I have combined these two x-rays, the patient cannot be personally identified via this image.

•   Again I find myself needing to apologize – I have not updated for a long time.   •

[January 02, 2013]   I have not been updating this web site regularly. Some parts have fallen well out of date. However, I am piecing through and updating parts occasionally these days. It is a work in progress, and it does not usually command top priority. I will put extensive updates perhaps later this year, and then will put another note in this feed indicating that the major overhaul is complete.

•   Review paper on neural oscillations is under review at Nature Neuroscience.   •

[July 27, 2011]   With colleagues Thilo Womelsdorf, Kai Miller, and Paul Tiesinga (see Collaborators page), I submitted a review paper recently to Nature Neuroscience, and just found out that it has been sent out for review. Excited and nervous!

This review paper was born out of a special Symposium hosted at the COSYNE conference (computational and systems neuroscience) in Snowbird, Utah, early this spring. The Symposium was organized by Kai and Thilo, and focused on establishing heuristics and overarching frameworks that can help make sense of the complex patterns of neuronal oscillations and networks that many groups around the world have recently been observing (see below). The review paper focused on a survey of the specific and indeed very different cell-level configurations and firing dynamics that lead to and constrain the standard frequency bands of oscillatory activity in the brain. We connected this microcircuit-level physiology to oscillatory frequency bands to neuronal synchrony to cognition and to disease states.

•  It has been WAY TOO LONG since I updated this page!   •

[July, 2011]   Thank you all who visit this page each day – the web counts are always amazing to me (see web visitors page). I am really sorry I haven’t updated recently. I have been solidly focused on three manuscripts – all completely new stuff (I would say “new & exciting” – but obviously I think it is exciting: I never sleep! Will let you decide whether you think it is exciting, when I get the manuscripts out!)…. For now, thanks again for coming, and keep using your brains to the best of your ability, and for the greatest good!

•   SfN is coming to town!   •|•   Social event for ICE researchers.   •

[Nov 10, 2010]   This week and next, the Society for Neuroscience will be here in San Diego. That is ~35,000 neuroscientists in one place – sounds like the beginning of some kind of joke! :-)   Seriously, I am super excited to see friends and colleagues from all over the world! Welcome!

Secondly, I am hosting a social event for other ICE researchers, on the Monday of the conference (Nov 15). Please contact me for invitation if you haven’t gotten one. Should be lots of fun. We will have a neuroradiologist DJing the event! Can’t say that every day. And of course a great time to unite minds from around the world toward a common purpose of understanding the human brain, including neurosurgeons, neurologists, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists and so forth.

•   This site is now translated!   •

[July 15, 2010]   I installed a web plugin called Global Translator that uses the Google Translate engine to create automatic translations of my pages. The translations may not be perfect (tell me!) but it is great to be able to reach more countries!

•   ICE Symposium at HBM 2010   •

[June 8, 2010]   Thank you to all who filled the room at the symposium I chaired at the Human Brain Mapping annual meeting in Barcelona!

The symposium was about applying ICE to human cognitive neuroscience. The speakers aimed to report results that reveal new levels or principles of organization in the brain and are uniquely possible with ICE, yet which can inform and complement non-invasive imaging such as fMRI & MEG. Speakers: Ryan T. Canolty, PhD, Jean-Philippe Lachaux, PhD, Aurélie Bidet-Caulet, PhD, and [me].

Please see the session abstract (pdf), and the schedule of symposia. If you attended, please send your feedback and questions!

•   Updated Title; and NRSA PostDoc Funding   •

[May 27, 2010]   I was awarded an NRSA postdoctoral training fellowship from the NIH, via the Institute for Neural Computation (UC San Diego and the Salk Institute). The new line of research I proposed is very exciting to me, so this makes me very happy.

Effective July 1, my title will become “Fellow in Cognitive Neuroscience”. My supervisors will be Prof. Terry Sejnowski and Prof. Eric Halgren.

•   European Speaking Tour   •

[May 26, 2010]   I just returned from giving several invited and hosted talks, mostly at Max Planck Institutes. Head full of ideas, new international collaborations sprouting, exciting tips for data analysis and chunking of results – this feels like Science at its best! (Also, a nice vote of confidence that they sponsored all my travels and honoraria.)

The talks were in Tubingen (host = Jeremy Hill), Leipzig (Angela Friederici, and Bob Turner), Utrecht (Nick Ramsey), Nijmegen (Ole Jensen, Peter Hagoort), Milan (Stefano Cappa), and Frankfurt (Pascal Fries). See my CV for further details.

•   E-Poster at HBM 2010   •

[May 4, 2010]   My submission for the Human Brain Mapping conference in Barcelona was chosen as a top-ranked abstract (third HBM conference in a row where this was the case).

This year, such abstracts were invited for “E-Posters”: to be mounted on HBM web site. I didn’t authorize the e-poster for the HBM web site, for various reasons, but you can download the poster here. (2MB PDF).

•   Press Coverage for paper in Science   •

[Oct-Nov, 2009]   A recent paper led to several popular-press articles, which put the paper’s findings in a broad context (see below):

Disclaimer: Some articles are not as accurate or precisely-worded as I would like; and I cannot vouch for the non-English articles.

USA-Based News Sources:   

NPR (“Morning Edition” interview , & article) Science News Scientific American LA Times WIRED DISCOVER CBC US News & World Report Scientific American (60-Second Science) SCIENCE (Perspectives piece) Max Planck / Nijmegen (about Perspective)

Voice of America (TV and Radio) Harvard Science Kurzweil   AI Neurophilosophy blog (thoughtful) WomensHealth.gov The Harvard Crimson Newswise Science Daily Singularity Hub Psych Central Science Centric

Misc:  

Article from my high school alumni magazine a few years ago (general-audience):
“Mind Reader”

Commercial Applications:  
Article about an SBIR project to integrate multiple neurological and physiological sensors and data streams in order to predict neurological (as opposed to physical) stress, in critical workers such as soldiers, surgeons and pilots:

“TIAX taps a market by tapping soldiers’ vital signs”