MSE Grace Hopper Lecture: “Bioelectronics to Probe Brain-Body Physiology” (Polina Anikeeva – Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
January 16, 2025 at 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Biological signaling in the mammalian nervous system spans a dizzying range of spatial and temporal scales. To understand how cellular and molecular signals contribute to physiology and behavior and to treat the neurological and psychiatric conditions our group designs tools that mimic biological complexity yet match the materials properties of tissues. By combining polymer engineering, fiber drawing, and solid-state microelectronics we create scalable fiber-based tools that record and modulate cell signaling in the central and the autonomic nervous systems in behaving rodents. Using these fiber-based tools we reveal the contributions of gut-brain circuits not only to ingestive and metabolic functions but also to high-level behaviors previously attributed exclusively to brain signaling. To probe receptor contributions to neural circuit dynamics, we synthesize magnetic nanotransducers that convert externally applied magnetic fields into thermal, chemical, mechanical, and electrical signals. Since biological tissues exhibit negligible magnetic permeability and low conductivity, magnetic fields can penetrate deep into the body with no attenuation allowing us to apply the nanomagnetic transducers to remotely modulate ion channel function in arbitrarily deep tissues. We employ magnetic neuromodulation to control reward and motivation circuits and extend their applications to relieve motor dysfunctions in mouse models of Parkinson’s disease.
Polina Anikeeva
Department Head, Materials Science and Engineering, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Research Laboratory of Electronics Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Polina Anikeeva received her BS in Physics from St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University, and a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT. She completed her postdoctoral training at Stanford, where she created devices for optical stimulation and recording from brain circuits. She joined MIT faculty in 2011 and is currently Matoula S. Salapatas Professor and the Department Head of Materials Science and Engineering. She is also a Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and serves as the Director of the K. Lisa Yang Brain-Body Center and as an Associate Director of the Research Laboratory of Electronics. She is an associate member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Anikeeva’s Bioelectronics group focuses on the development of minimally invasive biologically inspired approaches to record and modulate physiology of the nervous system, and especially in the context of brain-body communication. Anikeeva is a recipient of NSF CAREER Award, DARPA Young Faculty Award, the TR35, Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise, and the NIH Pioneer Award.