Biomedical Commons^™

A Novel Signal Processing Method For Intraoperative Neurophysiological Monitoring In Spinal Surgeries, Krishnatej Vedala

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Intraoperative neurophysiologic monitoring is an integral part of spinal surgeries and involves the recording of somatosensory evoked potentials (SSEP). However, clinical application of IONM still requires anywhere between 200 to 2000 trials to obtain an SSEP signal, which is excessive and introduces a significant delay during surgery to detect a possible neurological damage. The aim of this study is to develop a means to obtain the SSEP using a much less, twelve number of recordings. The preliminary step involved was to distinguish the SSEP with the ongoing brain activity. We first establish that the brain activity is indeed quasi-stationary whereas …

Effects Of Hearing Aid Amplification On Robust Neural Coding Of Speech, Jonathan Daniel Boley

Open Access Dissertations

Hearing aids are able to restore some hearing abilities for people with auditory impairments, but background noise remains a significant problem. Unfortunately, we know very little about how speech is encoded in the auditory system, particularly in impaired systems with prosthetic amplifiers. There is growing evidence that relative timing in the neural signals (known as spatiotemporal coding) is important for speech perception, but there is little research that relates spatiotemporal coding and hearing aid amplification.

This research uses a combination of computational modeling and physiological experiments to characterize how hearing aids affect vowel coding in noise at the level of …

Effects Of Dip-Coated Films On The Properties Of Implantable Intracortical Microelectrodes, Salah Sommakia

Open Access Dissertations

The successful clinical use of implantable intracortical microelectrodes (ICMs) to treat certain types of deafness, blindness, and paralysis is limited by a reactive tissue response (RTR) of the brain. This RTR culminates in the formation of a tight glial scar and a loss of neuronal density around implanted ICMs, and is accompanied by a decrease in signal to noise ratio and an increase in impedance. While no comprehensive mechanistic understanding of the underlying biology is currently agreed upon in the field, a general consensus exists around a highly volatile acute RTR phase. During this acute phase, the electrical properties of …

Manufacturing Nerve Guidance Conduits By Stereolithography For Use In Peripheral Nerve Regeneration, Mireya Aidee Perez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Nerve regeneration techniques have been studied in great depth in recent years. Peripheral nerve injuries, in particular, can be caused by accidents, falls, athletic injuries, etc. Current methods of repair include direct suturing of the 2 injured nerve ends or the use of autografts, when a nerve section is taken from another area of the body. Both methods have a series of limitations which have led researchers to study alternative methods of repair. Nerve guidance conduits may provide a viable solution because they can be modified and adapted to the patient's needs. Some conduits already exist on the market and …