News

Deep brain stimulation for treating Parkinson’s disease has proven to be one of the most successful areas of neuromodulation, but several challenges still confront neurologists and neurosurgeons administering the therapy. One such challenge is determining the optical stimulation regimen for patients. A research team at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin has developed an algorithm that may increase efficiency.

The Scottsdale Headache Symposium is a leading headache conference dating back to 1970. This year’s conference attendance was record breaking, with 1,200 in-person and 300 remote participants. Noninvasive neuromodulation system vendors were among the vendors participating in the conference. Theranica, which secured a $45 million series C funding round in August 2022, had a significant presence. ele…

editors Susan Schaeffer, James Cavuoto, and Victor Pikov will take part in a conference session devoted to bioelectronic medicine at the 2023 Biotech Showcase on January 10, 2023 in San Francisco. The session is entitled, “Bioelectronic Medicine: Electrifying Investor Interest.” The session will offer a panel discussion on factors impacting biopharma industry and venture capital investment in bioelectronic medicine.

More than 120 neurotechnology industry professionals—the majority of which were in person—participated in the 22nd annual Neurotech Leaders Forum, held in San Francisco, CA earlier this month. The two-day event featured a number of panel discussions relating to neurotechnology commercialization as well as presentations from more than a dozen neurotech startup companies. Keynote speaker at this year’s conference was Mudit Jain, founder and general partner of Treo Ventures as well as the NuXcel accelerator.

As years go, 2022 was not as lucrative for the neurotechnology industry as some prior years, including 2021. Investor concern about the general state of the economy certainly had an impact on funding activity. But there were still some noteworthy investments in the neurotech space, including a $104 million round for Nalu Medical and a $77 million round for Cala Health. And although the size of earl…

Neural engineering researchers are developing a range of new tools and technologies for stimulating the enteric nervous system, a network of peripheral nerves that play a major role in the gut-brain connection. Polina Anikeeva from MIT gave an overview of progress in this area in a special lecture at the Neuroscience 2022 meeting in San Diego, CA earlier this month. In her talk, Anikeeva described…

and James Cavuoto, editor November 2022 issue Bolstered interest in the space, several vendors of brain-computer interface systems revealed new details about their product and technology directions earlier this month. Neuralink founder Elon Musk assembled a team of key employees to update a mostly adoring audience on recent product enhancements on November 30. Musk said the firm would prioritize work on restoring vision with its N1 wireless cortical implant and R1 neurosurgical robot.

While much of the world is currently focused on World Cup matches and a few months before Americans become enmeshed in NCAA Basketball, the neurotechnology industry seems to be fascinated with the fierce competition among firms developing brain-computer interfaces. Much of the current media frenzy on this subject no doubt stems from the role Elon Musk’s Neuralink startup is playing, given the current attention he has drawn from his antics while taking over Twitter.

and James Cavuoto, editor October 2022 issue The market for treating upper-extremity paralysis caused injury has been a difficult one for neurotechnology vendors to crack. In the early 2000s, an Ohio company called NeuroControl developed an implanted hand-grasp stimulator called Freehand that restored hand function to hundreds of quadriplegics before that company closed its doors, largely for financial reasons.

Medtronic plc, the Minneapolis, MN manufacturer of neuromodulation systems, announced its intention to pursue a separation of the company’s patient monitoring and respiratory interventions businesses, which are part of the company’s Medical Surgical Portfolio. The as-yet unnamed spinoff will include the BIS monitoring system, which measures depth of consciousness in the operating room. Medtronic obtained the BIS product line in its merger with Covidien in 2014.