Investigators:
John Ralston, Neursantys Inc.
VP Nguyen, UMass Amherst
MassAITC Cohort: Year 3 (Aging)
Neursantys’ NEURVESTA wearable bioelectronic solution is a cutting-edge platform that integrates both diagnostic sensing and therapeutic treatment for degraded sensory and motor balance functions. This project will develop ML-driven methods to adapt the treatment to each patient’s unique sensory and motor impairment profile to increase the effectiveness of NEURVESTA’s current treatment protocol.
The NEURVESTA treatment protocol includes both a pre- and post-treatment diagnostic assessment using a novel neurophysiological impairment sensing technology called physiological vibration acceleration (phybrata) that quantifies each patient’s unique balance impairment profile. The subsequent therapeutic treatment utilizes a specialized form of non-invasive transcranial electric stimulation developed by Neursantys, called sub-threshold wideband stochastic Electrical Vestibular Stimulation (swsEVS), that has been shown to induce persistent neuroplastic recovery of degraded balance in patients between 55 and 90 years of age. The current NEURVESTA platform utilizes the same fixed swsEVS parameters for all patients, and treatment consists of three 20-minute sessions per week over a 6-week period.
By harnessing a retrospective data set comprised of over 2000 pre- and post-treatment phybrata measurements and unique balance maps, we will develop advanced ML algorithms to generate adaptive adjustments of swsEVS stimulation parameters that will further enhance therapeutic effects of the NEURVESTA treatment. This personalized closed-loop approach is expected to reduce the number of treatment sessions required to attain maximum balance recovery, which will lower treatment delivery costs and improve patient accessibility and adherence to NEURVESTA balance treatments.