Neuroprosthetics Lab
Our Team
David Brandman, MD PhD FRCSC (Co-Director)
Sergey Stavisky, PhD (Co-Director)
I’m a neuroscientist and neuroengineer and an Assistant Professor in the UC Davis Department of Neurological Surgery. I work at the intersection of systems and computational neuroscience, neuroengineering, and machine learning. I’m trying to understand how the brain controls movements, and to use this knowledge to build brain-computer interfaces that treat brain injury and disease.
I did my undergrad at Brown University, my PhD in the Stanford Neurosciences Program in the group of Dr. Krishna Shenoy, and my postdoc in the Stanford Neural Prosthetics Translational Laboratory led by Drs. Jaimie Henderson and Shenoy.
Trainees
Nick Card, BS (Postdoctoral Fellow, starting summer 2022)
I'm an incoming postdoc for the UC Davis NPL. I am currently a PhD candidate in the University of Pittsburgh's neural engineering program. My PhD research is centered around the development of imaging techniques for studying primate cortical connectivity in vivo at high resolution. My undergraduate research at Pitt Bioengineering was centered around brain-computer interfaces in behaving primates. I look forward to joining the NPL in Summer 2022!
Maitreyee Wairagkar, PhD (Postdoctoral Fellow)
I am a postdoc researcher in AI, brain-computer interface, affective robotics and rehabilitation and assistive technology. I am currently at Imperial College London and will be joining the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab in spring 2022. I have completed my PhD in Cybernetics from the University of Reading, UK focusing on decoding motor intention from brain signals for BCI. My research focuses on developing intuitive modes of interaction with technology using brain signals, movements, natural language, and facial expressions with healthcare applications to support people with neurological disorders.
Lab Staff
Chaodan "April" Luo, BS (Junior Specialist, jointly with Prof. Randy O'Reilly)
I graduated from UC Davis with a degree in cognitive science with an emphasis in neuroscience in 2020. I joined Dr. Randall O’Reilly’s lab as a junior specialist in summer 2020 and have been helping design, running EEG experiments and analyzing EEG data. Driven by my interests in neuroengineering, I will participate in projects related to neurally-controlled speech devices in the UC Davis Neuroprosthetic Lab.
Tyler Singer-Clark, BS (Part-time Research Engineer)
I graduated from MIT in 2014 with a degree in Computer Science and Engineering. After 5 years in industry developing business software with the startup MaestroQA, I joined the BrainGate research team at Brown University in 2019 as a Research Engineer, with a focus on delivering a BCI system that can be used continuously in the home. I joined the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab in 2021 to contribute to the research effort toward building a neurally-controlled speech device for use by people with paralysis.
Xianda Hou, BS (Masters student in Computer Science)
I’m a second-year graduate student at UC Davis with an interest in Natural Language Processing. After joining UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab, I’ve been working on building a real-time phoneme substitution tool to help analyze people's responses to audio latency and synthesized speech errors.
Venina Kalistratova, MA (Medical student)
Kushant Patel, MS (Data Scientist / Software Engineer)
I’m a recent grad from University of Waterloo (2021) with a Masters of Applied Science degree in Mechatronics Engineering. I specialize in machine learning and autonomous vehicles. I’ve spent 4 years working professionally at various firms including Tibco softwares, TopHat Robotics, Aquasensing and Watonomous as Data Analyst, Data Engineer and Robotics Engineer. I’ve keen interests in domains including computer vision and reinforcement learning. I’ll be joining the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab as a full time Data Scientist/Software Engineer in Spring '22 to assist team in building a BCI system for restoring lost abilities.
Suvi Varshney, BS (Masters student in Computer Science, jointly with Prof. Lee Miller)
I am an MS in Computer Science student at UC Davis. My research interests lie in the amalgamation of Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing, specifically in smart personal assistants. At the Neuroprosthetics Lab, I am working on automated metrics for assessing neurally-synthesized speech quality.
Preprint manuscripts
2019
SIMNETS: a computationally efficient and scalable framework for identifying networks of functionally similar neurons
Hynes JB, Brandman DM, Zimmerman JB, Donoghue JP, Vargas-Irwin CE bioRxiv. January. 463364 |
Peer reviewed manuscripts
2022
Large-scale neural recordings with single neuron resolution using Neuropixels probes in human cortex
Paulk AC, Kfir Y, Khanna A, Mustroph M, Trautmann EM, Soper DJ, Stavisky SD, Welkenhuysen M, Dutta B, Shenoy KV, Hochberg LR, Richardson MR, Williams* ZM, Cash* SS Nature Neuroscience. |
2021
The neural representation of force across grasp types in motor cortex of humans with tetraplegia
Rastogi A, Willett FR, Abreu J, Crowder DC, Murphy B, Memberg WD, Vargas-Irwin CE, Miller JP, Sweet J, Walter NL, Rezaii PG, Stavisky SD, Hochberg LR, Shenoy KV, Henderson JM, Kirsch RF, Ajiboye AB eNeuro. |
2020
Decoding spoken English from intracortical electrode arrays in dorsal precentral gyrus
Wilson* GH, Stavisky* SD, Willett FR, Avansino DT, Kelemen JN, Hochberg LR, Henderson** JM, Druckman** S, Shenoy** KV Journal of Neural Engineering. |
2020
Power-saving design opportunities for wireless intracortical brain–computer interfaces
Even-Chen N, Muratore D, Stavisky SD, Hochberg L, Henderson J, Murmann B, Shenoy KV Nature Biomedical Engineering. |
2020
Speech-related dorsal motor cortex activity does not interfere with iBCI cursor control
Stavisky SD, Willett FR, Avansino D, Hochberg LR, Shenoy* KV, Henderson* Journal of Neural Engineering. |
2020
Neural Representation of Observed, Imagined, and Attempted Grasping Force in Motor Cortex of Individuals with Chronic Tetraplegia
Rastogi A, Vargas-Irwin C, Willett F, Abreu J, Crowder DC, Murphy B, Memberg W, Miller J, Sweet J, Walter B, Cash S, Rezaii P, Franco B, Saab J, Stavisky SD, Shenoy KV, Henderson J, Hochberg LR, Kirsch R, Ajiboye AB Scientific Reports. |
2020
The Discriminative Kalman Filter for Nonlinear and Non-Gaussian Online Bayesian Filtering
Burkhart MC, Brandman DM, Franco B, Hochberg LR, Harrison MT Neural Computation. Mar 18:1-49 |
2019
Neural ensemble dynamics in dorsal motor cortex during speech in people with paralysis
Stavisky SD, Willett FR, Wilson GH, Murphy BA, Rezaii P, Memberg WD, Miller JP, Kirsch RF, Hochberg LR, Ajiboye AB, Druckmann S, Shenoy KV*, Henderson JM* eLife. |
2019
Accurate estimation of neural population dynamics without spike sorting
Trautmann E, Stavisky SD, Lahiri S, Ames KC, Kaufman M, O’Shea DJ, Vyas S, Sun X, Ryu S, Ganguli S, Shenoy KV Neuron. |
2019
Principled BCI Decoder Design and Parameter Selection Using a Feedback Control Model
Willett FR, Young D, Murphy B, Memberg W, Blabe C, Pandarinath C, Stavisky SD, Rezaii P, Saab J, Walter B, Sweet J, Miller J, Henderson JM, Shenoy KV, Simeral JD, Jarosiewicz B, Hochberg LR, Kirsch R, Ajiboye AB Scientific Reports. |
2019
Decoding Speech from Spike-Based Neural Population Recordings in Secondary Auditory Cortex of Non-Human Primates
Heelan C, Lee J, O'Shea R, Brandman DM, Truccolo W, Nurmikko AV Nature Communications Biology. 2:466 |
2019
BCI performance comparison of recurrent neural network and Kalman filter decoders in retrospective simulation
Hosman T, Vilela M, Milstein D, Kelemen JN, Brandman DM, Hochberg LR, Simeral JD 9th International IEEE/EMBS Neural Engineering Conference on Neural Engineering. |
2018
Brain-machine interface cursor position only weakly affects monkey and human motor cortical activity in the absence of arm movements
Stavisky SD, Kao JC, Nuyujukian P, Pandarinath C, Blabe C, Ryu SI, Hochberg LR, Henderson JM, Shenoy KV Scientific Reports. |
2018
Inferring single-trial neural population dynamics using sequential auto-encoders
Pandarinath C, O’Shea DJ, Collins J, Jozefowicz R, Stavisky SD, Kao JC, Trautmann EM, Kaufman MT, Ryu SI, Hochberg LR, Henderson JM, Shenoy KV, Abbott LF, Sussillo D Nature Methods. |
2018
Neural Population Dynamics Underlying Motor Learning Transfer
Vyas S, Even-Chen N, Stavisky SD, Ryu SI, Nuyujukian P, Shenoy KV Neuron. |
2018
Feasibility of automatic error detect-and-undo system in human intracortical brain-computer interfaces
Even-Chen N, Stavisky SD, Pandarinath C, Nuyujukian P, Blabe CH, Hochberg LR, Henderson JM, Shenoy KV IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering. |
2018
Robust closed-loop control of a cursor in a person with tetraplegia using Gaussian process regression
Brandman DM, Burkhart MC, Kelemen J, Franco B, Harrison MT, Hochberg LR Neural Computation. November 30(11) |
2018
Rapid calibration of an intracortical brain computer interface for people with tetraplegia
Brandman DM, Hosman T, Saab J, Burkhart MC, Shanahan BE, Ciancibello JG, Sarma AA, Milstein DJ, Vargas-Irwin CE, Franco B, Kelemen J, Blabe C, Murphy B, Young DR, Willett F, Pandarinath C, Stavisky SD, Kirsch RF, Walter BL, Ajiboye B, Cash SS, Eskandar EN, Miller J, Sweet J, Shenoy KV, Henderson JM, Jarosiewicz B, Harrison MT, Simeral JD, Hochberg LR Journal of Neural Engineering. January 24; 15(2) |
2017
Augmenting intracortical brain-machine interface with neurally driven error detectors
Even-Chen N, Stavisky SD, Kao JC, Ryu SI, Shenoy KV Journal of Neural Engineering. |
2017
Motor cortical visuomotor feedback activity is initially isolated from downstream targets in output-null neural state space dimensions
Stavisky SD, Kao JC, Ryu SI, Shenoy KV Neuron. |
2017
Trial-by-trial motor cortical correlates of a rapidly adapting visuomotor internal model
Stavisky SD, Kao JC, Ryu SI, Shenoy KV Journal of Neuroscience. |
2017
Review: Human Intracortical recording and neural decoding for brain-computer interfaces
Brandman DM, Cash SS, Hochberg LR Transactions on Neural Systems & Rehabilitation Engineering. 2017. March 2 |
2016
The need for calcium imaging in nonhuman primates: new motor neuroscience and brain-machine interfaces
O’Shea D, Trautmann EM, Chandrasekaran C, Stavisky SD, Kao JC, Sahani M, Ryu SI, Deisseroth K, Shenoy KV Experimental Neurology. |
2016
Making brain-machine interfaces robust to future neural variability
Sussillo* D, Stavisky* SD, Kao* JC, Ryu SI, Shenoy KV Nature Communications. |
2015
A high performing brain-machine interface driven by low-frequency local field potentials alone and together with spikes
Stavisky SD, Kao JC, Nuyujukian P, Ryu SI, Shenoy KV Journal of Neural Engineering. |
2015
Neural point-and-click communication by a person with incomplete locked-in syndrome
Bacher D, Jarosiewicz B, Masse NY, Stavisky SD, Simeral JD, Cash SS, Friehs G, Hochberg, LR Neurorehabilitation & Neural Repair. |
2015
Spike Train SIMilarity Space (SSIMS): a framework for single neuron and ensemble data analysis
Vargas-Irwin C, Brandman DM, Zimmerman J, Donoghue JP Journal of Neural Computation. Jan 27(1):1-31 |
2014
Performance sustaining intracortical neural prostheses
Nuyujukian P, Kao JC, Stavisky SD, Fan JM, Ryu SI, Shenoy KV Journal of Neural Engineering. |
2014
Information systems opportunities in brain-machine interface decoders
Kao JC, Stavisky SD, Sussillo D, Nuyujukian P, Shenoy KV Proceedings of the IEEE. |
2014
Non-causal spike filtering improves the information content of threshold crossings of intracortical neural signals
Masse NY, Jarosiewicz B, Bacher D, Stavisky SD, Simeral JD, Hochberg LR, Donoghue JP Journal of Neuroscience Methods. |
2012
A recurrent neural network for closed-loop intracortical brain-machine interface decoders
Sussillo D, Nuyujukian P, Fan JM, Kao JC, Stavisky SD, Ryu SI, Shenoy KV Journal of Neural Engineering. |
Peer reviewed conference proceedings
2021
Home Use of a Percutaneous Wireless Intracortical Brain-Computer Interface by Individuals With Tetraplegia
Simeral JD, Hosman T, Saab J, Vilela M, Franco B, Kelemen J, Brandman DM, Ciancibello JG, Flesher SN, Rezaii PG, Rosler DM, Shenoy KV, Henderson JM, Nurmikko AV, Hochberg LR IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. Mar 30 |
2019
The Neuropixels probe: A CMOS based integrated microsystems platform for neuroscience and brain-computer interfaces
Dutta B, Andrei A, Harris TD, Lopez CM, O’Callahan J, Putzeys J, Raducanu BC, Severi S, Stavisky SD, Trautmann EM, Welkenhuysen M, Shenoy KV International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), San Francisco, USA. |
2018
Decoding Speech from Intracortical Multielectrode Arrays in Dorsal "Arm/Hand Areas" of Human Motor Cortex
Stavisky SD, Rezaii P, Willett FR, Hochberg LR, Shenoy* KV, Henderson* JM Proceedings of the 40th Annual International Conference of the IEEE EMBS, Honolulu, USA. |
2015
An auto-deleting brain machine interface: Error detection using spiking neuronal activity in the motor cortex
Even-Chen* N, Stavisky* SD, Kao JC, Ryu SI, Shenoy KV 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Milan, Italy. |
2015
System Identification of Brain-Machine Interface Control Using a Cursor Jump Perturbation
Stavisky SD*, Kao* JC, Sorokin JM, Ryu SI, Shenoy KV Proceedings of the 7th International IEEE EMBS Conference on Neural Engineering, Montpellier, France. |
2014
Hybrid Decoding of Both Spikes and Low-Frequency Local Field Potentials for Brain-Machine Interfaces
Stavisky SD, Kao JC, Ryu SI, Shenoy KV Proceedings of the 36th Annual International Conference of the IEEE EMBS, Chicago, USA. |
2013
Investigating the role of firing-rate normalization and dimensionality reduction in brain-machine interface robustness
Stavisky SD, Kao JC, Ryu SI, Shenoy KV Proceedings of the 35th Annual International Conference of the IEEE EMBS, Osaka, Japan. |
2010
Continuous Control of the DLR Light-weight Robot III by a Human with Tetraplegia Using the BrainGate2 Neural Interface System
Vogel J, Haddadin S, Simeral DJ, Stavisky SD, Bacher D, Hochberg LR, Donoghue JP, van der Smagt, P Proceedings of the International Symposium on Experimental Robotics, New Delhi, India. |
- Data for Stavisky et al. eLife 2020 “Neural ensemble dynamics in dorsal motor cortex during speech in people with paralysis” ishere.
- Data for Paulk et al. Nature Neuroscience 2022 "Large-scale neural recordings with single neuron resolution using Neuropixels probes in human cortex" is available on Dryad: https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061%2Fdryad.d2547d840
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Stavisky SD, Shenoy KV, Henderson JM, U.S. Patent Application No. US20190333505A1. Systems and Methods for Decoding Intended Speech from Neuronal Activity (filed April 2018, pending)
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Even-Chen N, Shenoy KV, Kao JC, Stavisky SD. U.S. Patent No. 10779746. Task-outcome error signals and their use in brain-machine interfaces (issued 09/22/2020)
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Sussillo D, Kao JC, Stavisky SD, Shenoy KV, U.S. Patent No. 10223634. Multiplicative recurrent neural network for fast and robust intracortical brain machine interface decoders (issued 3/5/2019)
At UC Davis, candidates need to first apply and be accepted to the overall PhD or Masters program, before selecting a specific lab. First-year PhD students will rotate in several labs before committing to their longer-term PhD lab. The purpose of this is to help them broaden their experience and find a lab they like, and we think this a really great system. There isn't a way to directly apply to a specific lab, and individual faculty like us don't make the decision of who UC Davis will interview or accept (it's handled on behalf of the entire PhD program by an admissions committee).
We are committed to making the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab a welcoming and collaborative environment. We are striving to build a lab culture of open communication and mutual respect. There are no exceptions for “brilliant jerks” and no tolerance for harassment of any form. We believe that an environment where everyone feels safe and valued is the key to all of us being able to learn from one another. We hope to foster a scientific and educational environment that benefits from the unique perspectives, expertise, and hard work of every member of the team.
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