About the Seminar:

By stimulating or recording electrical or chemical signals generated by neurons, microelectrode arrays implanted in the brain have created a renaissance in the treatment and understanding of neurological diseases and injuries. Likewise, these devices are an enabling technology to understand normal brain function and behavior. Ideally, signal detection by chronic implants would be stable during the months and years following implantation, but fouling, degradation, and cellular encapsulation of implants are all significant challenges to achieving stable, long-term signal quality. Our lab’s primary goals are to: (1) improve the basic science understanding of the interaction between implanted electrodes and brain cells, and (2) to develop next-generation electrodes with improved chronic signal detection and stability. In the first part of this talk, I will describe our recent results illustrating the impacts of implanted electrodes on the structure and function of local neurons, including alterations in ion channel expression, synaptic transporter expression, dendritic spine density, and excitability. These observations are complemented by molecular interrogation of tissue-device interactions using spatial transcriptomics and RNA-sequencing. In the second part of the talk, I will describe our lab’s work to develop an all-diamond, implantable ultramicroelectrode for neurochemical sensing via fast-scan cyclic voltammetry (FSCV). Our results illustrate advantages of the diamond sensor for reduced biofouling and detection of neurotransmitters, including serotonin, while introducing new questions and challenges.

About the Speaker: 

Dr. Erin Purcell received her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Michigan Technological University (2001) and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Michigan (2004 and 2008). She completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the Kresge Hearing Research Institute at the University of Michigan (2012). She subsequently joined Michigan State University (MSU) as a senior research fellow in 2012 and was promoted to the rank of Assistant Professor in the Fall of 2014 in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She became a founding faculty member of MSU’s new Department of Biomedical Engineering in 2016. She was tenured as an Associate Professor in 2020. She became the Associate Chair for the Department of Biomedical Engineering in 2022. At MSU, Erin teaches 400- and 800-level neural engineering and medical device innovation courses to students from diverse backgrounds in engineering and life sciences. As the P.I. of the Regenerative Electrode Interface Lab, Dr. Purcell is pursuing new approaches to characterize, modulate, and regenerate neuronal responses at the interface of electrodes implanted in the brain. Her lab is funded by multiple NIH awards and an NSF CAREER award.