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Full-Text Articles in Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering

Hybrid Electro-Plasmonic Stimulation Of Primary Neurons, Ratka Damnjanovic Apr 2020

Hybrid Electro-Plasmonic Stimulation Of Primary Neurons, Ratka Damnjanovic

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Biomedical prosthetics utilizing electrical stimulation have limited, effective spatial resolution due to spread of electrical currents to surrounding tissue, causing nonselective stimulation. So, precise spatial resolution is not possible for traditional neural prosthetic devices, such as cochlear implants. More recently, alternative methods utilize optical stimulation, mainly infrared, sometimes paired with nanotechnology for stimulating action potentials, which has its own drawbacks, as it may heat surrounding tissue. Recently, we employed plasmonic stimulation methods utilizing gold nanoparticle-coated nanoelectrodes to convert visible light pulses into localized surface plasmon resonance transduction for stimulation of electrically excitable cells, which had limited success. Here, we report …


Rehabilitating Asymmetric Gait Using Asymmetry, Tyagi Ramakrishnan Nov 2017

Rehabilitating Asymmetric Gait Using Asymmetry, Tyagi Ramakrishnan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Human gait is a complex process that involves the coordination of the central nervous and muscular systems. A disruption to the either system results in the impairment of a person’s ability to walk. Impairments can be caused by neurological disorders such as stroke and physical conditions like amputation. There is not a standardized method to quantitatively assess the gait asymmetry of affected subjects. The purpose of this research is to understand the fundamental aspects of asymmetrical effects on the human body and improve rehabilitation techniques and devices. This research takes an interdisciplinary approach to address the limitations with current rehabilitation …


Plasmonic Stimulation Of Electrically Excitable Cells, Fnu Parveen Mar 2017

Plasmonic Stimulation Of Electrically Excitable Cells, Fnu Parveen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is a compelling need for the development of new sensory and neural prosthetic devices which are capable of more precise point stimulation. Current prosthetic devices suffer from the limitation of low spatial resolution due to the non-specific stimulation characteristics of electrical stimulation, i.e., the spread of electric fields generated. We present a visible light stimulation method for modulating the firing patterns of electrically-excitable cells using surface plasmon resonance phenomena. In in-vitro studies using gold (Au) nanoparticle-coated nanoelectrodes, we show that this method (substrate coated with nanoparticles) has potential for incorporating the technology into neural stimulation prosthetics, such as cochlear …