Investigators and Program Directors
William Shain, Phd
Research Scientist, Wadsworth Center, Translational Medicine
Center for Neural Communication Technology
School of Public Health, Biomedical Sciences
Environmental Health Sciences
Ph.D., Temple University, (1972)
Postdoctoral training, National Institutes of Health
E-mail: shain@wadsworth.org
Research Interests
Neural Prosthetics - devices, tissue reactions and integration, and long-term performance
Cartoon illustrating cell
organization around
inserted microfabricated
neural prosthetic devices
during the sustained
response period.
Our principal area of research is neural prosthetic devices. These devices have tremendous potential for recording and stimulating targeted brain regions. The potential of these devices is supported by their successes in acute studies; however, their long-term use has not been achieved. Decreases in device performance occur because of device-tissue interactions.
Our laboratory is studying the cell and tissue responses to inserted neural prosthetic devices in order to enable pharmacological control of reactive tissue responses and development of new device designs to promote long-term high fidelity performance.
In vitro cell culture systems, studies of microfabricated devices for drug delivery or electrophysiology use laboratory animals, and analysis of post-mortem human brain samples are used to study responses following deep-brain stimulation (DBS). Measurements of cell and tissue responses are made using a variety of techniques including three-dimensional (3D) multi-spectral imaging using confocal and multi-photon methods, automated image analysis using our FARSIGHT toolkit, electrochemical measurements (complex impedance spectroscopy), and electrophysiological recordings.
This multi-disciplinary research is the result of synergisms created by a team of scientists, engineers, and physicians. Our work has received support from the National Institutes of Health, National Scinece Foundation, the Wadsworth Center, and Korean Science Foundation.
Contact Information
Phone: (518) 473-3630
Fax: (518) 474-7466
E-mail: shain@wadsworth.org