Todd P. Coleman received B.S. degrees in electrical engineering (summa cum laude), as well as computer engineering (summa cum laude) from the University of Michigan. He received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from MIT and received postdoctoral training at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital under Emery Brown, MD, PhD, an anesthesiologist and quantitative neuroscientist. He is currently a Professor in the Bioengineering Department at UCSD, where he directs the Neural Interaction Laboratory. Dr. Coleman’s research is very multi-disciplinary, using tools from applied probability, physiology, and bio-electronics. His work has been featured on CNN, BBC, and the New York Times. Dr. Coleman has been selected as a National Academy of Engineering Gilbreth Lecturer, a TEDMED speaker, and a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.
PhD
Todd Coleman
In this talk, we will highlight recent technological and methodological advances in developing unobtrusive wearable technologies that can monitor many aspects of the central, autonomic, and enteric nervous systems. As an example, we will discuss our research group’s development of stretchable electronic biosensors that can be embedded within routinely used medical adhesives and applied to any part of the body for wireless monitoring. We will also discuss methodological developments to robustly track the dynamic interplay between the central, autonomic, and enteric nervous systems with statistical signal processing of electroencephalography (EEG), electrocardiography (ECG), and electrogastrography (EEG) signals, respectively. We will further highlight recent findings in the research literature that showcase their inter-relationship in health and disease and how their readouts have created new opportunities to advance neurofeedback therapies. With an interest in exploring beyond what is currently deployed or known in the neurorehabilitation field, we will highlight recent advances with the high-resolution EGG, which involves placing an array of electrical sensors on the abdomen to produce an “EKG of the digestive system”. To elucidate what may be actionable, we will discuss an ongoing clinical study involving neurofeedback that exploits the dynamics of the gut-brain axis. We will conclude with a vision of how the rapid advances in multi-organ physiology research, technology miniaturization, data science, and design principles create a bright future for the field of neurofeedback.