Blake S. Wilson

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Blake Shaw Wilson [1] is an American research scientist best known for his role in developing signal processing strategies for the cochlear implant.

Contents

Degrees

His undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees from Duke University, are in electrical engineering. He also holds a D. Science degree from the University of Warwick and a D. Engineering degree from University of Technology Sydney. In addition, he has been awarded honorary doctorates from Uppsala University [2] and from the University of Salamanca. [3]

Neural prosthesis research

His initial research projects investigated sound source localization in humans and bats and the effects of microwave radiation on the auditory system. In 1977, he began work as a research engineer at the Research Triangle Institute (RTI). He was the head of the RTI Neuroscience Program 1983–1994, the director of the Center for Auditory Prosthesis Research 1994–2002, and was a Senior Fellow 2002–07.

In 1983, Wilson received the first of seven contracts (1983–2005) from the Neural Prosthesis Branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to investigate sound coding strategies for cochlear implants. This long period of continuous funding allowed him to investigate multiple signal coding strategies. The best known is the high-rate, continuous interleaved sampling (CIS) processor. [4] [5]

Among many other features, CIS presents non-simultaneous pulses to the different electrodes in the implant, which greatly reduces deleterious interactions, or crosstalk, among the electrodes. Other signal coding strategies developed and implemented in his laboratory include predecessors of the Fine Structure Processing (FSP, FS4) strategies and of the Fidelity120 virtual channel strategy.

In collaboration with Cochlear Americas, Duke University and the NIH, Wilson's group also developed and evaluated a high pulse rate, channel-picking strategy. A direct outcome was the advanced combination encoder, or ACE strategy.

Awards and honors

In 2013, Wilson (with Graeme Clark and Ingeborg Hochmair) was awarded the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award [6] “for the development of the modern cochlear implant.”

In 2015, with G. Clark, E. Hochmair, I. Hochmair, and M. Merzenich, he was awarded the Russ Prize “for engineering cochlear implants that allow the deaf to hear.”

In 2017, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) [7] and he received the Helmholtz-Rayleigh Interdisciplinary Silver Medal [8] from the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) "for contributions to the development and adoption of cochlear implants."

In 2019, he received Duke's Distinguished Alumni Award. [9]

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cochlear implant</span> Prosthesis

A cochlear implant (CI) is a surgically implanted neuroprosthesis that provides a person who has moderate-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss with sound perception. With the help of therapy, cochlear implants may allow for improved speech understanding in both quiet and noisy environments. A CI bypasses acoustic hearing by direct electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve. Through everyday listening and auditory training, cochlear implants allow both children and adults to learn to interpret those signals as speech and sound.

Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award is one of four annual awards presented by the Lasker Foundation. The Lasker-DeBakey award is given to honor outstanding work for the understanding, diagnosis, prevention, treatment, and cure of disease. This award was renamed in 2008 in honor of Michael E. DeBakey. It was previously known as the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research.

Neuroprosthetics is a discipline related to neuroscience and biomedical engineering concerned with developing neural prostheses. They are sometimes contrasted with a brain–computer interface, which connects the brain to a computer rather than a device meant to replace missing biological functionality.

Graeme Milbourne Clark AC is an Australian Professor of Otolaryngology at the University of Melbourne. Worked in ENT surgery, electronics and speech science contributed towards the development of the multiple-channel cochlear implant. His invention was later marketed by Cochlear Limited.

The Greenwood function correlates the position of the hair cells in the inner ear to the frequencies that stimulate their corresponding auditory neurons. Empirically derived in 1961 by Donald D. Greenwood, the relationship has shown to be constant throughout mammalian species when scaled to the appropriate cochlear spiral lengths and audible frequency ranges. Moreover, the Greenwood function provides the mathematical basis for cochlear implant surgical electrode array placement within the cochlea.

The auditory brainstem response (ABR), also called brainstem evoked response audiometry (BERA), is an auditory evoked potential extracted from ongoing electrical activity in the brain and recorded via electrodes placed on the scalp. The measured recording is a series of six to seven vertex positive waves of which I through V are evaluated. These waves, labeled with Roman numerals in Jewett and Williston convention, occur in the first 10 milliseconds after onset of an auditory stimulus. The ABR is considered an exogenous response because it is dependent upon external factors.

Michael Matthias Merzenich is an American neuroscientist and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco. He took the sensory cortex maps developed by his predecessors and refined them using dense micro-electrode mapping techniques. Using this, he definitively showed there to be multiple somatotopic maps of the body in the postcentral sulcus, and multiple tonotopic maps of the acoustic inputs in the superior temporal plane.

The ASA Silver Medal is an award presented by the Acoustical Society of America to individuals, without age limitation, for contributions to the advancement of science, engineering, or human welfare through the application of acoustic principles or through research accomplishments in acoustics. The medal is awarded in a number of categories depending on the technical committee responsible for making the nomination.

Neurostimulation is the purposeful modulation of the nervous system's activity using invasive or non-invasive means. Neurostimulation usually refers to the electromagnetic approaches to neuromodulation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erwin Hochmair</span> Austrian electrical engineer (born 1940)

Erwin Hochmair is an Austrian electrical engineer whose research focuses in the fields of biomedical engineering and cochlear implant design. He has been a professor at the Institute of Experimental Physics, University of Innsbruck since 1986. He has authored and co-authored over 100 technical articles and holds about 50 patents. He is the co-founder and owner of the medical device company MED-EL.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ingeborg Hochmair</span> Austrian electrical engineer

Ingeborg J. Hochmair-Desoyer is an Austrian electrical engineer and the CEO and CTO of hearing implant company MED-EL. Dr Hochmair and her husband Prof. Erwin Hochmair co-created the first micro-electronic multi-channel cochlear implant in the world. She received the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for her contributions towards the development of the modern cochlear implant. She also received the 2015 Russ Prize for bioengineering.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MED-EL</span> Multinational medical device company

MED-EL is a global medical technology company specializing in hearing implants and devices. They develop and manufacture products including cochlear implants, middle ear implants and bone conduction systems. 

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claude-Henri Chouard</span>

Claude-Henri Chouard is a French surgeon born on 3 July 1931 in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, this Otologist has been a full member of the Académie Nationale de Médecine since 1999. He was director of the AP-HP Laboratory of Auditory Prosthesis and director of the ENT Research Laboratory at Paris-Saint-Antoine University Hospital from 1967 to 2001. He was also head of the institution's ENT Department from 1978 to 1998. In 1982, he was elected a member of the International Collegium ORL-AS. He achieved worldwide recognition in the late 1970s thanks to the work completed by his Paris laboratory's multidisciplinary team on the multichannel cochlear implant. This implanted electronic hearing device was developed at Saint-Antoine and alleviates bilateral total deafness. When implanted early in young children, it can also help overcome the spoken language problems associated with deafness.

A cortical implant is a subset of neuroprosthetics that is in direct connection with the cerebral cortex of the brain. By directly interfacing with different regions of the cortex, the cortical implant can provide stimulation to an immediate area and provide different benefits, depending on its design and placement. A typical cortical implant is an implantable microelectrode array, which is a small device through which a neural signal can be received or transmitted.

Monita Chatterjee is an auditory scientist and the Director of the Auditory Prostheses & Perception Laboratory at Boys Town National Research Hospital. She investigates the basic mechanisms underlying auditory processing by cochlear implant listeners.

John K. Niparko was an American surgeon, scientist and otolaryngologist who specialized in cochlear implants. Niparko edited and wrote several chapters of Cochlear Implants: Principles & Practices.

Auditory science or hearing science is a field of research and education concerning the perception of sounds by humans, animals, or machines. It is a heavily interdisciplinary field at the crossroad between acoustics, neuroscience, and psychology. It is often related to one or many of these other fields: psychophysics, psychoacoustics, audiology, physiology, otorhinolaryngology, speech science, automatic speech recognition, music psychology, linguistics, and psycholinguistics.

Robert V. Shannon is Research Professor of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery and Affiliated Research Professor of Biomedical Engineering at University of Southern California, CA, USA. Shannon investigates the basic mechanisms underlying auditory neural processing by users of cochlear implants, auditory brainstem implants, and midbrain implants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Debara L. Tucci</span> American otolaryngologist

Debara Lyn Tucci is an American otolaryngologist, studying ear, nose, and throat conditions. She co-founded the Duke Hearing Center and currently serves as a professor of Surgery and Director of the Cochlear Implant Program at Duke University. In September 2019 she became Director of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, one of the National Institutes of Health's 27 Institutes and Centers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Dowell</span> Australian audiologist and researcher

Richard Charles Dowell is an Australian audiologist, academic and researcher. He holds the Graeme Clark Chair in Audiology and Speech Science at University of Melbourne. He is a former director of Audiological Services at Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital.

References

  1. "Blake Shaw Wilson | Scholars@Duke". scholars.duke.edu. Retrieved 2019-10-17.
  2. "New honorary doctors in medicine – Uppsala University, Sweden". www.uu.se. Archived from the original on 2017-09-28. Retrieved 2016-02-02.
  3. "Doctor Honoris Causa Blake S.Wilson | Universidad de Salamanca". www.usal.es. Retrieved 2019-10-17.
  4. Wilson, Blake (2012). Better Hearing with Cochlear Implants: Studies at the Research Triangle Institute. San Diego, Plural Publishing, Inc. Archived from the original on 2018-10-14. Retrieved 2015-01-16.
  5. Wilson, B. S., Finley, C. C., Lawson, D. T., Wolford, R. D., Eddington, D. K., and Rabinowitz, W. M. (1991). "Better speech recognition with cochlear implants," Nature 352, 236-238.
  6. Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award 2013 Winners. The Lasker Foundation. Retrieved 20 April 2014.
  7. "Cochlear Implant Developer Blake Wilson Elected to the National Academy of Engineering". Duke Pratt School of Engineering. 2017-02-09. Retrieved 2019-10-17.
  8. Dorman, Michael; Zeng, Fan Gang; Hansen, John (2017-05-01). "Helmholtz-Rayleigh Interdisciplinary Silver Medal in Psychological and Physiological Acoustics, Speech Communication, and Signal Processing in Acoustics: Blake S. Wilson". The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 141 (5): 3761–3764. doi: 10.1121/1.4988284 . ISSN   0001-4966.
  9. "Alumni to Honor Two Faculty for Research, Teaching Advancements During Founders' Weekend". today.duke.edu. Retrieved 2019-10-17.