The innovation engine for new materials

Ramzi Deek

Ramzi Deek

Major: 

Mechanical Engineering

University: 

University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon

Mentor(s): 

Ali Nabi

Faculty Sponsor(s): 

Jeff Moehlis

Faculty Sponsor's Department(s): 

Mechanical Engineering

Project Title: 

CONTROLLING THE PHASE BEHAVIOR OF NEURAL IMPULSES

Project Description: 

Parkinson's disease affects millions of people in the United States, and has been the subject of active research, both in terms of studying the causes of the disease and its potential treatments. Our research fits into the second category: trying to control the phase behavior of neural synapses to treat the tremor symptoms. There is a hypothesis that claims that one of the reasons for the symptomatic tremors associated with the disease is due to a large population of neurons sending powerful electrical impulses at the same point in time (meaning they are synchronized and in phase) to muscles and organs, resulting in the uncontrollable tremors. A potential resolve to this problem would be to pursue studies and methods into desynchornizing these neural impulses, whereby removing commonality in phase by applying an additional electric impulse. The Moehlis lab employs Matlab codes, all requiring high computing power, to explore the various magnitudes of these electrical impulses that can be applied, based on the initial phases of the neural impulses, to disrupt the synchrony in all their phases, resulting in out-of-phase synapses. One application far down the road from this research would be to insert an electric chip into the brain that releases known magnitudes of electric impulses to effect the desynchronization.