APR 2024 Guest Speaker: Joshua Cain, PhD
Precise, Non-invasive Human Brain Stimulation with Focused Ultrasound
Dr. Joshua Cain began his career in Cognitive Neuroscience at UCLA, where his seminal work on novel brain-stimulation methods for treating traumatic brain injury earned him the Gengerelli Award for the Most Distinguished Dissertation, among other honors. Over the last decade, he has pioneered the use of transcranial Focused Ultrasound Stimulation (FUS), being among the first to apply this emerging technique in humans and leading its inaugural clinical trial. Focused Ultrasound offers non-surgical brain stimulation--with unparalleled spatial precision--anywhere in the brain, a feature Dr. Cain’s clinical trials have capitalized on by stimulating the deep brain regions that regulate arousal in comatose patients and those with similar conditions. Striking preliminary findings of these trials, including the temporary full restoration of consciousness and communication in some, have offered unprecedented hope to the hundreds of thousands of patients--in the US alone--suffering from these conditions, often for months or years with limited treatment options. Currently a senior research scientist at the Santa Monica, CA nonprofit: Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies (IACS), Dr. Cain is employing ultrasound brain stimulation to induce particularly-deep meditative states in expert Vipassana practitioners as well as other therapeutically-valuable states of consciousness. His work in meditation is just now hitting scientific journals as the first formal-publication of this use-case.
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