Title: “Bridging the Gap: Neurotechnology to replace, restore, and reprogram function across the nervous system”
Abstract: The human experience, and our ability to interact with and navigate the work, relies on the exceptional interconnectivity of the nervous system across distances and scales. Unfortunately, in injury this bidirectional flow is disrupted between one or many regions, often leading to permanent impairment of function. For example, after traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI), motor control and often sensory perception is lost below the site of injury. My laboratory is investigating the creation of an “electronic bridge” that can restore the flow of information between disconnected regions of the nervous system. To that end, we have pursued advanced neuroengineering devices and biologically-inspired machine learning in a first-in-human study demonstrating simultaneous lower extremity motor activation and somatosensory feedback enabled by perilesional epidural electrical stimulation (EES) in participants with sensory and motor complete SCI. We incorporated modern deep learning methodologies to establish stable stimulation parameters for target motor actions and sensory percepts. With an eventual goal to have such systems be utilized at home by future patients, we developed a tablet-based software program for participant-directed control of stimulation parameters. In this seminar, I will discuss the neurotechnologies we have worked with and developed to “read” information from one location and “write” information at another. I will focus on the use of the technology in SCI, but will discuss for the use of the technology as a research platform to explore nervous system health more generally.
Bio: David Borton received his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis in 2006, his PhD in Bioengineering from Brown University in 2012, and performed a Marie Curie post-doctoral fellowship at the Ecole Polytechnique Fèdèrale de Lausanne from 2012 to 2014. David Borton is currently an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Brain Science at Brown University School of Engineering, the Carney Institute for Brain Science and maintains an affiliate appointment in the Department of Cognitive Psychology at Brown University. He is also an Associate Professor of Neurosurgery at the Department of Neurosurgery, Rhode Island Hospital, and is a Biomedical Engineer at the Providence Veterans Affairs Center for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology. In 2024, Prof. Borton took on the role of Interim Director of the Institute for Biology, Engineering, and Medicine (I-BEAM) at Brown University with a mission to promote collaborative communities where researchers can thrive when bridging across fields to solve complex biological and fundamental challenges that impact humanity. Prof. Borton leads an interdisciplinary team of researchers focused on the design, development, and deployment of novel neural recording and stimulation technologies. Prof. Borton’s team leverages engineering principles to untangle the underpinnings of sensorimotor and neuropsychiatric disease and injury. In 2015, Prof. Borton was awarded the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award for his work on spinal cord electrical stimulation restoring sensory perception, which was expanded in 2017 by both DARPA and VA Merit awards to continue that effort. He now leads a DARPA program to “bridge the gap” in spinal cord injury through development and integration of innovative neurotechnologies. His work has been featured in Nature, Nature Biomedical Engineering, Nature Medicine, Neuron, and Science Translational Medicine, among others and the laboratory is currently supported by the U.S. Department of Defense, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the National Institute of Mental Health, the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, and industry partnerships.