Developing Personalized Brain Stimulation Therapy with Real-Time Simulation - MATLAB
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    Developing Personalized Brain Stimulation Therapy with Real-Time Simulation

    Ramona Samba, sync2brain
    Christoph Zrenner, sync2brain

    Sync2brain is a startup company working to develop personalized brain stimulation therapies for patients with neuropsychiatric disorders such as strokes or OCD. Using Simulink Real-Time™ programming, sync2brain is able to read and analyze brain activity data to trigger therapeutic stimuli at specific millisecond instances.

    As part of the MathWorks Startup Program, sync2brain has access to MATLAB® at a startup-friendly price and engineering support from MathWorks experts. The partnership and MATLAB product family enable them to save resources and work efficiently to build out and validate their technology.

    Published: 2 Aug 2023

    If we really think that at one point, we will be able into brain to provide therapy options for neuropsychiatric diseases, diseases like depression, like obsessive compulsive disorder, like schizophrenia.

    Many of these disorders aren't specific in brain network disorders, where there is a specific region in the brain that is dysfunctional.

    Brain stimulation therapy that is out there today is a one-fits-all solution, and the outcomes are not as good as they could be. sync2brain commercializes the technology that allows brain stimulation therapy to be synchronized to the individual brain state of the patient.

    We're trying to target the phase of oscillations. This is an instantaneous state that only lasts a few milliseconds. We need to process every millisecond. That's a special-use case that is not addressed by standard operating systems. And what we have done is to use Simulink Real-Time programming environment and hardware platform to use the tools that are available in that MathWorks Toolbox to do all the digital signal processing that is necessary.

    We read in brain activity data. We analyze that data and then make a decision at which instant to trigger therapeutic stimulus through a commercially available stimulation system.

    The special situation in the startup is that resources are very limited in the beginning. You have your idea. You're trying to get going. But you don't have a lot of money. You don't have a lot of people. And you want to test your idea first. And the startup program from MathWorks really helps to get started because prices are not too high. But also, you have access to engineers, to people with a lot of knowledge for these tools.

    We've had a lot of success with regular meetings with experts at MathWorks who helped us review how we were using those tools. I'd be able to just send a quick email-- is this the intended behavior? Am I doing it the way that it's intended?-- and always getting fast and very helpful feedback from the MathWorks team. This treatment has huge potential and is something which can really change how we can treat neurological and psychiatric brain disorders.

    And if I can contribute with this technology to improve therapy for those patients, then it's something worth working for.

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