Miguel Angelo L. Nicolelis

Miguel Nicolelis, M.D., Ph.D., is the Duke School of Medicine Distinguished Professor of Neuroscience, Duke University Professor of Neurobiology, Biomedical Engineering and Psychology and Neuroscience, and founder of Duke's Center for Neuroengineering. He is the founder and Scientific Director of the Edmond and Lily Safra International Institute for Neuroscience of Natal. Dr. Nicolelis is also founder of the Walk Again Project, an international consortium of scientists and engineers, dedicated to the development of an exoskeleton device to assist severely paralyzed patients in regaining full body mobility.
Dr. Nicolelis has dedicated his career to investigate how the brains of freely behaving animals encode sensory and motor information. As a result of his studies, Dr. Nicolelis was first to propose and demonstrate that animals and human subjects can utilize their electrical brain activity to directly control neuroprosthetic devices via brain-machine interfaces (BMI).
Over the past 25 years, Dr. Nicolelis pioneered and perfected the development of a new neurophysiological method, known today as chronic, multi-site, multi-electrode recordings. Using this approach in a variety of animal species, as well as in intra-operative procedures in human patients, Dr. Nicolelis launched a new field of investigation, which aims at measuring the concurrent activity and interactions of large populations of single neurons throughout the brain. Through his work, Dr. Nicolelis has discovered a series of key physiological principles that govern the operation of mammalian brain circuits.
Dr. Nicolelis pioneering BMI studies have become extremely influential since they offer new potential therapies for patients suffering from severe levels of paralysis, Parkinson’s disease, and epilepsy. Today, numerous neuroscience laboratories in the US, Europe, Asia, and Latin America have incorporated Dr. Nicolelis' experimental paradigm to study a variety of mammalian neuronal systems. His research has influenced basic and applied research in computer science, robotics, and biomedical engineering.
Education and Training
- Ph.D., University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), 1988
- M.D., University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), 1984
Selected Grants and Awards
- Medical Scientist Training Program
- Basic predoctoral training in neuroscience
- Path Toward MRI with Direct Sensitivity to Neuro-Electro-Magnetic Oscillations
- Autism as a Disease of Brain Circuit Timing
- Interval Timing and Motor Programming by Cortico-Striatal Ensembles
- A Virtual Reality Simulator to Study VLSBA and Test Brain-Actuating Technologies
- Dorsal Column Stimulation as a New Therapy for Motor Disorders
- Training in Fundamental &Translational Neuroscience
- Neuroimmune Response to Organophosphates and its Modulation by Dorsal Column Stimulation
- Sensorized Bimanual Brain-Machine Interface
- Trigeminal System Plasticity During Active Exploration
- Method for In-Vivo Assessment of Neuronal Dysfunction
- Gustatory Processing and Satiety
- Sensorized Neural Prosthetic
- Adaptive Sensory Coding in Rat Somatosensory Cortex
- Single Unit Multi-Site Electrophysiological Characterization of Epileptogenesis
- Cortical Microstimulation Cue Discrimination in Primates
- Corticofugal Modulation of Tactile Sensory Processing
- GNE 2007: Global NeuroEngineering 2007
- Closed-Loop Brain-Machine Interface for Augmenting Motor Performance
- Using cortical neural ensemble activity from macaque Monkeys' brains to control the 3D movements of a robotic arm
- Brain-Machine Interfaces for Monitoring and Modeling Sensorimotor...
- Contributions of Cortical Areas to Primate Arm Reaching
- Development Of Hybrid Brain-Machine Technology For Real-Ti
- Multimodal influences on cortical taste procesing
- Visual and Tactile Integration in Primate Cortex
- Optical Mapping System for the Study of Complex Spatiotemporal Activity in the Heart and Brain
- Sensory Response Modulation During Motor Activity
- Experience-dependent plasticity inprimate neocortex
- Transcallosal Integration of Tactile Information in Rats
- Amygdalocortical interactions during taste aversion.
- Experience-Dependent Plasticity in Primate Neocortex
- (97-0013) New Biologically Inspired Models for Large Scale Recurrent Neural Networks
- Network Level Properties Of Somatosensory Plasticity
- Experience Dependent Plasticity In Primate Neocortex
- Trigeminal System Plasticity During Facial Anesthesia