We investigate how real-time feedback of brain signals can be used to help individuals with movement disorders. Using brain-computer interface (BCI) technology, our participants are able to use only their brain to control external effectors such as a robotic arm or an object in a virtual reality scene. For individuals with certain motor disorders (e.g., Parkinson's Disease, focal dystonia, essential tremor), learning to use the BCI may induce plasticity that provides some recovery from symptoms. For individuals with severe disabilities due to central nervous system trauma or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the BCI may provide an alternative communication channel to restore some independence.

Bullock, K. R., Pieper, F., Sachs, A.J., and Martinez-Trujillo, J. C. Visual and presaccadic activity in area 8Ar of the macaque monkey lateral prefrontal cortex.  J Neurophysiol.  118(1): 15-28 (2017).

Leavitt, M. L., Pieper, F., Sachs, A.J., and Martinez-Trujillo, J. C. Correlated variability modifies working memory fidelity in primate prefrontal neuronal ensembles.  Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A.  114(12): E2494-E2503 (2017).

Boulay, C. B., Pieper, F., Leavitt, M., Martinez-Trujillo, J. & Sachs, A. J. Single-trial decoding of intended eye movement goals from lateral prefrontal cortex neural ensembles. J. Neurophysiol. 115, 486–99 (2016).

Tremblay, S., Pieper, F., Sachs, A. & Martinez-Trujillo, J. Attentional filtering of visual information by neuronal ensembles in the primate lateral prefrontal cortex. Neuron 85, 202–15 (2015).

Tremblay, S., Doucet, G., Pieper, F., Sachs, A. & Martinez-Trujillo, J. Single-Trial Decoding of Visual Attention from Local Field Potentials in the Primate Lateral Prefrontal Cortex Is Frequency-Dependent. J. Neurosci. 35, 9038–49 (2015).

Irwin, Z., Thompson, D., Schroeder, K., Tat, D., Hassani, A., Bullard, A., Woo, S., Urbanchek, M., Sachs, A., Cederna, P., Stacey, W., Patil, P. & Chestek, C. Enabling Low-power, Multi-modal Neural Interfaces through a Common, Low-bandwidth Feature Space. IEEE Trans. Neural Syst. Rehabil. Eng. (2015).

Sachs, A. J., Babu, H., Su, Y.-F., Miller, K. J. & Henderson, J. M. Lack of efficacy of motor cortex stimulation for the treatment of neuropathic pain in 14 patients. Neuromodulation 17, 303–10; discussion 310–1 (2014).

Leavitt, M. L., Pieper, F., Sachs, A., Joober, R. & Martinez-Trujillo, J. C. Structure of spike count correlations reveals functional interactions between neurons in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex area 8a of behaving primates. PLoS One 8, e61503 (2013).

Sachs, A. J.,  Khayat, P. S., Niebergall, R., & Martinez-Trujillo, J. C. (2011). A metric-based analysis of the contribution of spike timing to contrast and motion direction coding by single neurons in macaque area MT. Brain Res., 1368, 163-184.