Congratulations to Ed Bartlett, associate dean of undergraduate affairs in the College of Science, professor of biological sciences and biomedical engineering, and Brandon Coventry, Ph.D., (BME ‘21) on the recent publication of their work in PNAS Nexus, a U.S. National Academy of Sciences publication.

The focus of their work has been on the improvement of deep brain stimulation (DBS) systems. DBS involves the implantation of stimulating electrodes into the brain that has shown great success in treating diseases that are implicated with circuit changes in the brain, such as Parkinson's disease, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and epilepsy. However, its therapeutic effect is limited by the fact that stimulation is on 24 hours a day, seven days a week; resulting in patient adaptation to the therapy, difficulty in programming the device for each patient's specific disease course, and return to the clinic for battery replacement and retuning of the stimulator.

The duo developed a patent-pending "closed-loop" approach that actively monitors the subject's brain state in real-time, learns statistical mappings of brain state in response to changes from sleep-wake cycles and neural adaptation as well as stimulation patterns that drive neural firing to desired, "normal" firing patterns. This method uses an artificial intelligence method called deep reinforcement learning which allows for personalized stimulation design.

The patent-pending publication can be found here: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20230191130A1/en

Coventry and Bartlett disclosed their work to the Purdue Innovates Office of Technology Commercialization, which has applied for a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to protect the intellectual property. Industry partners interested in developing or commercializing the work should contact Patrick Finnerty, senior business development and licensing manager – life sciences, at pwfinnerty@prf.org about track code 69662.