Collaborative Projects

Overview

 

The three Technology Research and Development (TR&D) projects have a pivotal role in the National Center for Adaptive Neurotechnologies (NCAN). They help to shape the goals and designs of the core technologies; and on the other hand they are the first implementations of the technologies and thus provide the first opportunities to test, improve, and validate them. The collaborative projects greatly enhance the ability of the TR&Ds to perform their central function in NCAN. Each collaborative project constitutes an implementation of adaptive neurotechnology that is at once demanding in its testing of the technology, important in itself, and, hopefully, a first example of a new class of neurotechnology applications. With these purposes in mind, the collaborative projects are selected and designed to accomplish three specific aims: (1) To demonstrate the value of new adaptive neurotechnologies by showing that they can make significant new scientific contributions and/or can address important clinical problems. (2) To guide the development and optimization of these new adaptive neurotechnologies by applying them to important purposes and assessing the results. Through ongoing push-pull interactions between NCAN and the collaborator, the new technologies are adapted to and optimized for important specific scientific and/or clinical purposes. (3) To define the capabilities and limitations of these new adaptive neurotechnologies and the operations that can help to maximize the former and overcome the latter. By applying them to important purposes and demonstrating their efficacy, the collaborative projects indicate the kinds of scientific questions and/or clinical problems for which the new technologies are most appropriate, and they indicate the factors most critical for their successful use. Thus, the projects should help ensure that the technologies are applied to the right applications and in the right way. By serving these aims, the collaborative projects enhance the ability of the TR&Ds to develop novel adaptive neurotechnologies that serve important scientific or clinical purposes, to validate their efficacy for these purposes, and to define the guidelines for using them most effectively. Thus, they enhance the productivity of the TR&Ds; and they also enhance the achievements of the NIH-funded projects of the collaborators. Furthermore, they prepare the new technologies for use in NCAN service projects and, ultimately, for widespread training and dissemination.

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