The final keynote speaker of BioBusiness Event 2009 is Nick Ramsey of UMC Utrecht.

Abstract:

Severe paralysis due to neuromotor disease, brainstem stroke or spinal cord injury leaves patients with an untreatable condition, sometimes cutting them off completely from their environment. Brain-computer interface (BCI) systems aim at providing these patients with a means to communicate and to exert some control over external devices. They do

so by recording signals generated by specific brain areas, and translating those to input to a computer so the patient can control a cursor within specific software. Although BCI’s based on EEG scalp-electrode recording have promising qualities, more is expected from implantable BCI systems with electrodes placed directly on or in the brain. In this lecture I will explain how BCI works, and present the different systems currently being investigated. I will then focus on implantable systems, and on the problems we currently face in developing such systems.

About Nick Ramsey:

Nick Ramsey obtained his mastersdegree in Psychology in 1987, after which he acquired a PhD in psychopharmacology, both in Utrecht. He then got a fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in the USA where he was trained in imaging of human brain functions. He returned to Utrecht to set up a functional neuroimaging research group at the department of Psychiatry to study schizophrenia. In 2003 he got a VIDI grant to study

‘working memory’. In 2007 his interest shifted to studying the human brain directly with electrodes implanted in patients. He got a VICI grant in 2007 to develop an implantable human brain-computer interface.