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Alan Dorval II, Ph.D., Biomedical Device Innovation
Dr. Dorval applies the tools of engineering to study the nervous system and design ways to improve the health and quality of life for persons with disorders of the nervous system. Dorval's research activities include: engineering novel treatments to alleviate the symptoms of neurological diseases; quantifying information processing in the brain and interpreting informational changes induced by disease and treatment states; and elucidating the relationships between the structural elements of neurons and neural tissue, their physiological dynamics and their behavioral responses. Pursuing these interests, Dorval performs experimental studies, recording from and providing electrical stimulation to neurons or neural tissue while assessing symptom severity in computational models, animal models and human participants with neurological disorders.
Dorval conducts research in the field of neural engineering, oriented toward designing devices that will alleviate the symptoms of neurological diseases and disorders by modulating neural activity. In most cases, intelligent construction of neuromodulatory devices requires a more complete understanding of how neural activity relates to behavior than currently exists. Hence the goals of my specific research projects are often two stage: first, to better understand how neural activity corresponds to behavior and symptoms, and second to engineer interventions that will modify neural activity to improve function.