john seymour, associate professor
Autonomic nerves are typically only hundreds of microns in diameter near their organ targets and these carry all of the sympathetic and parasympathetic control signals. We present a cuff-less microneedle array specifically designed to potentially map small autonomic nerves. The focus of our work is the design and fabrication of an ultra-miniaturized silicon needle array on a silicone substrate. We demonstrate arrays having 24 microneedles and the resulting tissue reactivity at the rat vagus nerve after one-week and six-week implantation. We will share our lessons and challenges to surgery and recording in small autonomic nerves.
Dr. John Seymour is an Associate Professor Associate Professor of Neurosurgery at the McGovern School of Medicine University of Texas Health Science Center (UTHealth). He also has a joint appointment as Associate Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Rice University. Prior to joining UT Health, he served as research faculty in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Michigan where he developed novel neural interface systems including stretchable bioelectronics and optogenetic mapping tools. His industry experience includes working at NeuroNexus as a Principal Scientist. He earned his B.S. with Honors in Engineering Physics from the Ohio State University and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Michigan. Prof. Seymour heads the Translational Biomimetic Bioelectronics Lab where they seek to develop novel materials and fabrication methods to improve the treatment of neurological disease. Medical devices for direct read and write operations with the nervous system are still in their infancy with serious challenges in all aspects of device design – sensors, actuators, materials, electronics packaging, system architecture. The application of nanofabrication techniques allows us to develop bioelectronics that are currently out of reach for most medical device companies and still achieve our explicit goal of first-in-human experiments.