Biography:

Dr. Marom Bikson is a Cattell Professor of Biomedical Engineering at The City College of New York (CCNY) of the City University of New York (CUNY) and co-Director of the Neural Engineering Group at the New York Center for Biomedical Engineering. The translational R&D activity of his group spans pre-clinical studies, computational models, device design and fabrication, regulatory activities, and clinical trials. Technologies developed by his group are in clinical trials in over 200 medical centers and include neuromodulation interventions for neuropsychiatric disorders, intra- and post-operative sensors, patient compliance tools, and surgeon training simulators.  Dr. Bikson has published over 200 papers and book-chapters and is inventor on over 30 patent applications. He is known for his work on brain targeting with electrical stimulation, cellular physiology of electric effects, and electrical safety.  Dr. Bikson co-invented High-Definition transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (HD-tDCS), the first non-invasive, targeted, and low-intensity neuromodulation technology.  Dr. Bikson consults for medical technology companies and regulatory agencies on the design, validation, and certification of medical instrumentation.  Dr. Bikson is co-founder of Soterix Medical Inc. Prior to becoming faculty at CUNY, Dr. Bikson was a research fellow at the University of Birmingham Medical School, UK and a Research Associate at Sontra Medical LLC, in Cambridge Mass.  Dr. Bikson received a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland OH, and a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD.

Description talk Dr. Marom Bikson:

Concurrent EEG and tDCS has tremendous promise as a tool to probe brain function and to optimize (close-loop) interventions. Several reports have been published using equipment and signal processing that claims to remove any artifacts of tDCS in the EEG that would confound interpretation. We conducted the first exhaustive characterization of tDCS artifacts in the EEG using state-of-the-art recording (ANT) and stimulation (Soterix Medical) hardware.  We identify and characterize "inherent physiologic" artifacts in EEG during tDCS result from stimulation generating large DC offsets which are then incrementally modulated by physiology-specific impedances. Physiologic artifacts thus take on the temporal (frequency) characteristics of the physiologic process and the spatial profile (magnitude) is strongly determined by the montage-specific DC offset. As such, physiologic artifacts are prominent near stimulation electrode locations confounding the detection of “real” neurogenic EEG changes, or the reliance on intensity, polarity, or electrode position experimental controls. Importantly, physiologic artifacts are inherent, meaning they are present with any devices use. It is biased to market any commercial technology as artifact-free. Rather, acknowledging and understanding the origins of these physiologic artifacts to guide new sophisticated methods to remove them. High quality stimulation and recording is critic in regards to additional “Inherent Stimulator Artifacts” that relate to the quality of stimulation and recording hardware.

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