• Minnesota

    Mayo Clinic to host the BRAIN Initiative symposium

computer monitor of brain image of patient with epilepsy

Rochester, Minn. — Mayo Clinic will host the Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) symposium Oct. 9-10, 2015. The symposium aims to further the collaborative approach to initiate and accelerate discovery in brain science. Government, industry and academic leaders and researchers from across the globe will convene in Rochester to further their work in neuroscience research and therapies. Walter Koroshetz, M.D., the director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, will be the keynote speaker.BRAIN Symposium Logo

“By bringing together stakeholders from across the range of groups involved in the BRAIN Initiative, we hope to highlight the dual promises of the BRAIN Initiative: to drive public/private collaboration toward developing revolutionary tools to aid the basic understanding of the brain and to quickly translate these discoveries into therapies,” says Kendall Lee, M.D., Ph.D., Mayo Clinic neurosurgeon, who leads the Mayo Clinic Neural Engineering Laboratory, a team of more than 30 neurosurgeons, neurobiologists, engineers, imaging scientists and support staff. This team and the collaborators from the University of Texas in El Paso and Hanyang University in Korea won the BRAIN Initiative award to develop deep brain stimulation technology to detect the release of neurotransmitters in the living brain and modulate brain activity.

MEDIA CONTACT: Duska Anastasijevic, Mayo Clinic Public Affairs, 507-284-5005, newsbureau@mayo.edu

“We are excited to host the BRAIN Initiative symposium, where we will showcase all the work that is being done in a variety of laboratories focused on the biology of the brain. We hope to identify gaps in knowledge, so we can define areas for further research and collaboration,”says Kevin Bennet, the chair of the Mayo Clinic Division of Engineering, where he directs more than 60 engineers and programmers focused on developing novel biomedical engineering systems and implantable devices. Bennet co-chairs the Neural Engineering Laboratory.

Key executives from the medical industry, including Medtronic, Boston Scientific, GlaxoSmithKline, IBM, Cyberonics, Greatbatch and Siemens, will be present to discuss the latest advances in neurotechnology and their roles in the BRAIN Initiative public/private partnership.

Learn more: Focusing on the Biology of the Brain

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