16 < Part icles
Funding for a Brain Prosthesis
Viterbi Shares in $2.3 Million Grant
BERGER team TO partner with Wake Forest and Kentucky medical schools
USC College neurobiologist and a French pharmaceutical firm will work with biomedical engineer Ted Berger’s Lab
Building on decades of basic research, a team led by Theodore Berger of the Viterbi faculty has won a four-year, $16.4 million grant to restore lost memory function. Berger, a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering who holds the David Packard Chair and directs the Center for Neural Engineering, will partner with Vasilis Marmarelis from the same department and chip design expert John Granacki of the school’s Information Sciences Institute. Wake Forest Medical School and the Kentucky Medical School are also part of the project. The research will build upon and coordinate with Berger’s work in the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems Engineering Research Center. Berger has been working on decoding the functionality of the brain’s hippocampus cells for more than three decades. The hippocampus, seated deep within the brain’s temporal lobe, is where the brain creates new memories. In recent years, the Viterbi researchers have been collaborating with a Wake Forest team to design a prosthesis that would perform brain function lost due to damage to the hippocampus from a stroke or injury. The project, funded by NSF and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, could eventually go further by enhancing normal memory or helping to deduce the particular codes needed for high-level cognition. The new grant, says Berger, will pave the way to the next steps on this path. //
FALL 2009 viterbi.usc.edu
Prof. Theodore Berger’s brain prosthesis research has gathered support from two new large grants.
Two faculty members in the Viterbi School’s Department of Biomedical Engineering are sharing a $2.3 million award from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, with a French pharmaceutical firm and a USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences neurobiologist. Professor Ted Berger and Jean-Marie Bouteiller, a research assistant professor in Berger’s lab, will work with Michel Baudry, USC professor of neurobiology, and drug discovery company Rhenovia Pharma on an intense study of the amino acid L-glutamate, which regulates countless biological systems. Baudry is the principal investigator of the project. Berger says the research effort will develop a new technology of mathematical modeling and computer simulation tools to systematically explore molecular processes underlying glutamatergic synaptic transmission, the effects of those synaptic processes on multi-synaptic cellular dynamics, and ultimately, a small network of hippocampus neurons. He says, “several neurological conditions,
e.g., schizophrenia, are believed to be related to regulatory disruption of the glutamatergic system.” Baudry says that while the ultimate goal is to enable effective development of new drugs, the research proposed will work to expand basic understanding. “The problem with glutamate in terms of pharmaceuticals is that this molecule is absolutely ubiquitous throughout the body,” Baudry says. “What is therapeutic in one area can be toxic in another. The trick is to find a way to hone in on the specific neural cells you want to affect, without disturbing the others.” The research is centered on a detailed model of glutamatergic synaptic transmission, called EONS, first developed by Bouteiller in Berger’s lab. Their research on EONS was, and still is, supported by the NIH-funded Biomedical Simulations Resource (BMSR), which is dedicated to the development of new methods for mathematically modeling physiological systems.” //