Melbourne School of Engineering
Centre for Neural Engineering

Research Areas

The Centre for Neural Engineering will conduct its research by focusing on providing solutions to the social and developmental issues that our world faces in the 21st century. With a technological inclined yet aging population, the desire for a greater standard of living that has already fuelled the advancement of medical technology in surgery, prosthetics and biotech will be directed into understanding and treating neurological function. We aim to stand at the forefront of this research and will focus on the following neurological functionality:

Auditory and Visual Pathways

We aim to model the end-to-end auditory pathways for the construction of superior bionic ears. A poignant problem for high-level end-to-end models of the auditory pathways is that they are not capable of explaining why cochlear implant patients have poor pitch perception. A key research direction will convert these models to multiscale models and refine them to achieve greater neuronal realism and better predictive power of what implant patients actually hear.

Modelling the end-to-end visual pathway would be able to facilitate the development of the bionic eye. Plasticity and attention of both auditory and visual pathways are the primary of modelling. Can patients gain better sight or vision from their implants? Can stimuli permanently alter cortex to keep it from becoming unstable? Such questions enable the development of superior brain-computer interfaces as well as to allow exploration of the brain-cognition link in general.

Epilepsy

Epilepsy research allows the centre to model the corticothalamic networks, discovering how they stay poised at the edge of stability, thereby facilitating the development of biotechnical cures for epilepsy. We aim to develop holographic methods for simultaneous optical stimulation of hundreds of neurons in 3D space to probe how networks of neurons work. Novel technologies such as quantum sensing will be developed to gain insights into neuronal networks.

Integrated Research

The Centre will also build Australia’s capacity of hybrid-skilled researchers who are trained in the physical and life sciences and engineering; such researchers will be best-placed to contribute readily to myriad other pressing problems in the life sciences and ensure Australia remains scientifically competitive in the age of the New Biology. Progress in one program will advance the others because there are common principles behind how the brain works.

Research Methodology and Tools

As the centre is focus upon development of mathematically precise and engineering friendly models of the brain as well as to implement and test such models in the real world, many concepts and tools from mathematics and the physical sciences will be used. These concepts include:

Multi-scale Modelling

Modeling of mathematical and computational brain models is analogous to how meteorologists build models of the weather. Different models will serve different purposes; a model of the brain for pitch perception would likely make gross approximations to all regions except the auditory pathways, for example. The insistence on whole-brain models (however approximate parts of such models may be) is a key strategy to ensure that models of sub-processes are not developed in isolation, but are integrated with at least an approximation of other brain dynamics, and that the modeling in the Audition, Vision and Epilepsy programs can be merged to form, for example, an accurate model of the sensory cortex.

Human-Computer Interfaces

The recognises that technology drives advances in neuroscience. The Centre will develop novel electro-neural, optical and other sensing technologies in collaboration with partners. The model validation process is cyclic: identify what data to collect, use the data to find the major source of modeling error, then refine the model accordingly.

Algorithms

The recent advancement of engineering models and algorithms may be used to gain additional insight into how certain aspects of the brain may operate. Traditional theory of control and signal processing as well as many tools developed for manipulation of electrical signals, analysis of electrical networks and construction of high level integrated circuits may provide a way to gather data from brain activity as well as to directly interface with the brain.

Applications

The applications of our research allow the centre to service the greater community and to provide expertise for our industry partners in order to tackle the illnesses and social problems we face today. They include: