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A Neural Engineering Track Within Bioengineering: Lecture and Lab Courses 2006-2510: A NEURAL ENGINEERING TRACK WITHIN BIOENGINEERING: LECTURE AND LAB COURSES David Schneeweis, University of Illinois-Chicago J Hetling, University of Illinois-Chicago Patrick Rousche, University of Illinois-Chicago Page 11.77.1 Page © American Society for Engineering Education, 2006 A NEURAL ENGINEERING TRACK WITHIN BIOENGINEERING: LECTURE AND LAB COURSES Neural engineering as a distinct specialty within bioengineering Neural engineering (also called neuroengineering) has recently been identified as an emerging field of specialization within the broader field of biomedical engineering, or bioengineering. (The terms “biomedical engineering” and “bioengineering” are virtually synonymous in most contexts, so “bioengineering” will be used in this article for simplicity.) Neural engineers self-identify as engineers/scientists interested in engineering challenges related to the brain and nervous system. It has been referred to as a “merger of engineering and neuroscience” [1]. Many neural engineers work on clinically oriented challenges, including for example developing sensory prostheses for the deaf and blind or designing systems to stimulate walking motion in the legs of spinal chord injury patients. But other neural engineers are interested primarily in understanding how the brain and nervous system work, or are affected by disease. Although engineers and scientists have been doing this kind of work for decades, it is only within the last decade or so that neural engineering has become recognized as a named sub- specialty. Indeed it has only been recently that “neural engineering” has existed as a distinct subject track at the annual meeting of the Biomedical Engineering Society. But the field is rapidly growing as witnessed by the establishment of the Journal of Neural Engineering in 2004, and the holding of the 1st International IEEE EMBS Conference on Neural Engineering in 2003. Judging by the number of open faculty positions advertised for neural engineers, it would appear that representation of neural engineers on engineering faculties is increasing concomitantly. This article will focus primarily on the neural engineering undergraduate curriculum developed in the BioEngineering Department at the authors’ institution, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Special emphasis will be placed on the laboratory component, since this is in certain ways the most important, yet the most challenging. Training neural engineers Many undergraduate bioengineering programs require students to select an area in which to focus their coursework during their latter undergraduate years. This so-called “tracking” is meant to give students some depth within the very broad bioengineering field. It has been argued that depth helps students to compete more successfully for jobs, but exploring a subject area in depth is also a beneficial intellectual exercise in its own right. It is difficult to determine how many bioengineering programs now include neural engineering among their track options, but a search through the Whitaker Foundation Biomedical Engineering Curriculum Database [2]– a repository for course and curricular information in bioengineering– returns 187 courses having “neural” in the title. (According to the web site, the database includes information for “more than 100 academic institutions” 11.77.2 Page [2].) In our own BioEngineering Department at UIC, neural engineering is one of several tracks in which undergraduates may focus their studies. Over the past three years approximately 40% of graduating seniors selected neural engineering for their track. Students concentrating in neural engineering begin their track by taking two foundational neuroscience courses offered by the Biological Sciences Department. These courses, BioS 286:Biology of the Brain and BioS 484:Neuroscience I provide much of the core content essential for understanding and working with the nervous system. The core of the neural engineering track consists of three neural engineering courses taught by BioE faculty (Fig. 1). BioE 472:Models of the Nervous System is a quantitative neurobiology course focusing on fairly classical topics in the domains of membrane physiology, signaling in excitable cells, and synaptic communication. BioE:475:Neural Engineering 1 (NE1) is a seminar style course where students explore current issues in neural engineering by critically discussing journal articles. BioE 476:Neural Engineering Lab (NE Lab) is a hands-on experience where students get exposed to current research techniques (See below). NE1 together with NE Lab constitute the capstone courses of the undergraduate neural engineering track. Elective courses Undergraduates in BioEngineering at UIC are required to take twelve hours of elective courses. Figure 1 graphically depicts the relationship between the neural engineering track courses and the electives that students select. Electives closer to the track are more commonly selected than courses further from the track. Figure 1 is based on anecdotal evidence, and meant to depict qualitative relationships only. Although BioEngineering courses constitute the major fraction of elective courses taken by students in the neural engineering track, courses from other departments, and even other colleges, are not unpopular. Organic chemistry and biochemistry classes are extremely popular, in part because they are required or recommended by many medical school programs. Approximately one-third of UIC BioEngineering undergraduates are premed. Page 11.77.3 Page Figure 1: Neural Engineering course track at UIC A neural engineering laboratory course The greatest challenge of the neural engineering curriculum is providing hands on training in the modern techniques used by neural engineers. This challenge is formidable for several reasons. First, the intellectual domain of neural engineering spans several traditional curricula (i.e. engineering, neurobiology, materials science), making the scope of the labs very broad. Second, the methods of the neural engineer are often technically challenging and complex, making it difficult for students to gain sufficient competence in the timeframe of typical labs. Finally, the equipment needed for neural engineering labs can be costly and not generally available in an undergraduate learning environment. A search of the Whitaker Foundation’s Biomedical Engineering Curricular Database, with the term “neural laboratory” returns 27 courses from 16 distinct institutions [2]. But a closer examination of the course descriptions reveals that only about a half dozen of the courses include a substantial emphasis on what would be considered cutting edge neural engineering research techniques. The NE Lab course (BioE 476) at UIC was developed with the following objectives: ! Students should receive practical hands-on training in techniques used in basic and applications oriented neural engineering research ! Students should have the opportunity to interact with the nervous system at different scales (i.e. molecular, cellular, system levels) using in vivo and in vitro techniques ! Students should become aware of the unique challenges in developing hybrid technology ! Students should have opportunities to test hypotheses, and design solutions to posed challenges The objectives of this laboratory course have been addressed using a format that combines activities in a teaching laboratory with activities in faculty research labs. Initial funding for the teaching lab came from an NSF CCLI grant awarded to establish a facility that would be jointly used by BioEngineering and Biological Science students interested in neuroscience. (Unfortunately the aim of having a lab jointly populated by BioEngineering and Biological Sciences students never materialized.) The NE Lab course in its current form was offered in spring of 2005 to 4 students. Three neural engineering faculty divided responsibility for running the labs, and one teaching assistant (TA) helped out. Students earned two credit hours for the course, which was scheduled to meet for two hours per week, but often ran over. Assessment was based on performance in lab, and homework. The NE Lab consists of six distinct lab modules lasting between one and three weeks. Four of these modules (see Table 2) are well developed and described in detail in the following section. The remaining two modules are briefly described in a subsequent section. Page 11.77.4 Page Table 1. Four Well Developed Lab Modules of the NE Lab Course 1. In vivo neural interfaces: Non-invasive recording of the electroretinogram (3 wks) 2. Bioelectrodes: Fabrication and characterization (3 wks) 3. In vivo neural interfaces: Cortical recording using implanted electrode arrays (2 wks) 4. Modeling of hybrid systems: Simulation of responses of retinal neurons to extracellular electric fields (1 wk) Lab modules #1-4 of the NE Lab course Lab modules #1-4 are the most developed of the six modules, and are described in some detail in this section. Lab #1: In vivo neural interfaces: Non-invasive recording of the electroretinogram (ERG) The first lab module involves the recording of the light-evoked electroretinogram (ERG) from rats. This activity takes place in the research lab of one of the authors, and is intended to provide students the opportunity to practice fundamental skills common to any experiment involving the study of evoked sensory responses from animals. Skills such as data acquisition, analysis and interpretation are emphasized (Fig. 2). Students assist in handling the animals,
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