News
Papers, patents, people and press coverage.
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Event
Demonstrating our wireless implant platform at the 7th Bioelectronic Medicine Summit
The Bioelectronics Lab was at the 7th Bioelectronic Medicine Summit on September 28 and 29, held at The Lighthouse at the beautiful Chelsea Piers on Manhattan's Hudson River waterfront, where we demonstrated our wireless implantable neuromodulation platform.
Lab members at the 7th Bioelectronic Medicine Summit, Chelsea Piers, September 2026. -
People
Wrapping up the summer student research
We wrapped up this summer's student research. Deepak Karupen, a visiting scholar, worked on implant enclosures and wireless sensing, and Sahana Benny, a research intern, on materials and reliability testing for implant packaging. We celebrated with a lab lunch.
The lab lunch that closed out the summer program. -
Paper
Minimally invasive brain stimulation improves speech perception
With Stephan Bickel's group, we delivered brain stimulation through hardware that epilepsy patients already have during intracranial monitoring: the epicranial reference electrodes and the cranial bolts that anchor depth electrodes. The current bypasses the skin, avoiding the shunting that limits transcranial stimulation. In five patients, 100 Hz pulses whose amplitude followed the envelope of the sentence being heard improved accuracy on a speech-in-noise task in five of six sessions, more often when stimulation began 50 ms after sentence onset than at 200 ms. Published in Hearing Research.
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Paper
Real-time wireless telemetry for miniaturized implants
Our Neural Real-Time Telemetry Protocol (NRTP) streams neural data from implants built with off-the-shelf 2.4 GHz hardware. It had zero data loss down to −75 dBm, while Bluetooth Low Energy's performance degraded below −55 dBm. Led by Mohamed Elgohary, in Bioelectronic Medicine.
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Abstracts
Three abstracts from the 6th Bioelectronic Medicine Summit
Polymer packaging for chronic wireless implants in mice (Jason Wong), data-loss mitigation for wireless neural streaming (Mohamed Elgohary), and computational models for selective nerve stimulation with imec.
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Paper
Steering stimulation to organ-specific fibers in the vagus nerve
With imec and the Zanos lab, we showed that intermittent interferential current stimulation can control which fiber groups in the swine vagus nerve are activated. Published in Nature Communications.
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Paper
Review of vagus nerve stimulation against ischemia-reperfusion injury
With Lance Becker's group, a review of how vagus nerve stimulation may limit ischemia-reperfusion injury, the damage that follows when blood flow returns to tissue after it was cut off. It surveys the evidence for anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and anti-apoptotic effects, and for smaller infarcts, in skeletal muscle, gut, liver, kidney, lung, heart and brain. Published in Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy.
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Paper
Comment on a sham-controlled trial of auricular vagus nerve stimulation in rheumatoid arthritis
A letter with Cindy Aranow, Kevin Tracey and colleagues on Baker et al.'s randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled trial of auricular vagus nerve stimulation for active rheumatoid arthritis. Published in Arthritis & Rheumatology.
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Patent
US patent granted for a closed-loop brain implant
US 11,801,381 covers an implantable system for simultaneous closed-loop stimulation and recording at multiple brain sites, developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
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Paper
A real-time readout of norepinephrine release in the spleen during nerve stimulation
Fast-scan cyclic voltammetry in the mouse spleen picked up norepinephrine release within seconds of splenic, splanchnic or efferent vagus nerve stimulation, and the size of the signal explained 40% of the variance in the TNF response to endotoxin that followed. It gives anti-inflammatory neurostimulation studies a marker of successful activation as it happens. With the Zanos lab and colleagues, in the Journal of Neuroinflammation.
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Paper
Meeting report from the Fifth Bioelectronic Medicine Summit
A recap of the 2022 summit in New York, where more than thirty-five invited speakers and panelists from academia and industry discussed a field with several therapies newly approved for clinical use and others in late-phase trials. Published in Bioelectronic Medicine.
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Paper
The vagus nerve's internal organization supports fascicle-specific stimulation
Published in Brain Stimulation with the Zanos lab and collaborators.
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Paper
A fully implantable wireless neuromodulation system for mice
Our fully implantable recording and stimulation system for mice measures 2.2 cm³ and weighs 2.8 g. Built only from commercial components and 3D-printed packaging, it recharges wirelessly and delivered vagus nerve stimulation in implanted mice. Published in Biosensors and Bioelectronics.
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Paper
taVNS reduces pain and fatigue in systemic lupus erythematosus
A randomised, double-blind, sham-controlled pilot trial led by our colleague Cindy Aranow, published in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.
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Paper
Commentary on ultrasound-powered piezoelectric neurostimulators
Recent contributions to this approach to powering implants, plus its technical challenges and future directions. Published in Bioelectronic Medicine.
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Paper
Auricular stimulation as a non-invasive treatment for opioid withdrawal
A mini-review in Bioelectronic Medicine on auricular VNS devices for opioid detoxification.
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People
Ashish Upadhyay returns as a visiting intern
Ashish is pursuing an MS at NYU and is working on computer models of wireless power transfer.
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Talk
IEEE BioCAS 2019, Nara, Japan
Jason Wright presented our chronically implantable stimulator for small rodents.
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People
Jason Wright joins the lab as a Neural Engineer
Jason brings nine years of industry experience, including at a medical device startup and at Intel.
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People
Jose Mathew joins the lab as an Engineering Associate
Jose brings three years of experience in industrial automation and automated testing.
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Press
Lupus News Today: bioelectronic device to minimize pain and fatigue in SLE patients