The Central Nervous System is subject to several hundred diseases. Many of these are rare but others like stroke and traumatic brain injury are both common and potentially devastating. In many cases the prevention phase of medicine fails and individuals are left with mild or severe neurological disabilities. The rehabilitation or repair of these individuals is the focus of this talk with a primary focus on hearing and motor control and function.
Cochlear implants provide direct substitution of lost sensory input to the auditory system.
Remarkably, this input is soon interpreted by most implant users as sound. The results in the best cases are amazing while the results in other cases are more disappointing. It remains unclear what the differences is in these two populations. Deep Brain Stimulation for the symptoms of Parkinson's disease has also shown remarkable results in some patients. Similarly, standing and transfer systems for paralyzed individuals have shown great promise.