We are thrilled to announce that our team has been awarded an NIH-RO1 grant of over $3 million to develop a novel wearable device for objective quantification of visceral pain.

In collaboration with Dr. Bin Feng from UConn BME, Dr. Xiaomei Cong from Yale, and Dr. Wendy Henderson from UPenn, our team will be working on the project titled “Objective Integrated Multimodal Electrophysiological Index for Qualification of Visceral Pain.”
This innovative project aims to create a wearable device that objectively measures and quantifies visceral pain in patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). By integrating data from electrodermal activity (EDA), electrocardiogram (ECG), and electromyogram (EMG), the device will employ artificial intelligence to generate a multimodal biomarker known as the OIME index. This index will enhance our ability to detect pain events, assess pain levels, stratify IBS patients, and evaluate the effectiveness of pain management interventions. The ultimate goal is to develop a more accurate and objective tool for diagnosing and treating IBS-related pain, which has the potential to significantly improve patient outcomes and pave the way for new non-drug therapies.

PQL gains a new PhD graduate student as we welcome Camila Jimenez-Wong to the team!

The lab made a showing at the IEEE Medical Measurements & Applications conference in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, presenting work from various lab members including:

[Autoencoder based Nonlinear feature extraction from EDA signals for Emotion Recognition]
Yedukondala Rao Veeranki, Luis R. Mercado-Diaz and Hugo Posada-Quintero

[Electrodermal Activity on the Torso: Identification of Locations for Wearable Belt Monitors]
Riley McNaboe and Hugo Posada-Quintero

 

Collaborating students from Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Colombia, also presented:

[Design of a Smartphone-based clinical Electroretinogram recording system]
Nicolas Cordoba, Samuel Daza, Paul Constable, Hugo Posada-Quintero

We are actively recruiting participants for a study seeking to evaluate the effectiveness of transcranial direct current stimulation for recovering cognitive performance after sleep deprivation.

It has been proven that the application of a weak electrical current to an area of the brain can safely be used as a fatigue countermeasure to mitigate decrements in vigilance and enhance cognitive performance in various research settings. The purpose of this study is to simultaneously collect biological signals and cognitive function metrics over a 25hr period of sleep deprivation from subjects that have received brain stimulation to fully understand how it can act as a fatigue counter measure. Check out our Daily Digest announcement for more detail!

The lab is excited to welcome Amir to our research team as a seasoned PhD Student!