Eduardo Fernandez

Universidad Miguel Hernández de Elche | UMH · Institute of Bioengineering

Motivated by the success of cochlear implants for deaf patients, we are now facing the goal of creating a visual neuroprosthesis designed to interface with the occipital cortex as a means through which a limited but useful sense of vision could be restored in profoundly blind patients. We review the most important challenges regarding this neuropro...

Rehabilitation of sensory and/or motor functions in patients with neurological diseases is more and more dealing with artificial electrical stimulation and recording from populations of neurons using biocompatible chronic implants. As more and more patients have benefited from these approaches, the interest in neural interfaces has grown significan...

Light-regulated drugs allow remotely photoswitching biological activity and enable plausible therapies based on small molecules. However, only freely diffusible photochromic ligands have been shown to work directly in endogenous receptors and methods for covalent attachment depend on genetic manipulation. Here we introduce a chemical strategy to co...

Restoring vision by stimulating the brain Electrical stimulation of the visual cortex has long been proposed as an approach to restoring vision in blind people. Previous studies positioned electrodes on the surface of the brain and thus required delivery of relatively high currents. However, this approach limits the number of electrodes that can be...

BACKGROUNDA long-held goal of vision therapy is to transfer information directly to the visual cortex of blind individuals, thereby restoring a rudimentary form of sight. However, no clinically available cortical visual prosthesis yet exists.METHODS We implanted an intracortical microelectrode array consisting of 96 electrodes in the visual cortex...

The past decade has seen a global increase in population age, especially in developed countries, where aging involves visual diseases such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which severely affect quality of life (QoL) and mental health, as well as increase isolation and care costs. This study investigated how persons with AMD perceive the i...

The neurocognitive processing of emotions evoked by visual stimuli (based on affective images) could involve internal structures of the brain. Currently, numerous studies suggest the possibility of studying the dynamics of such processing using non-invasive techniques, such as electroencephalography. The aim of this study is to analyze the temporal...

Neurodegenerative diseases (NDs), such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and frontotemporal dementia, among others, are increasingly prevalent in the global population. The clinical diagnosis of these NDs is based on the detection and characterization of motor and non-motor symptoms. However, when these diagnoses are made,...

Electrical stimulation of the peripheral nervous system (PNS) is becoming increasingly important for the therapeutic treatment of numerous disorders. Thus, as peripheral nerves are increasingly the target of electrical stimulation, it is critical to determine how, and when, electrical stimulation results in anatomical changes in neural tissue. We i...

The state of the art in contemporary glioma surgery is the irremediable fight between anatomic, supramarginal and functional tumor resections. All our efforts are focused on increasing the ‘progression-free survival’ but not at any cost, as the neurological function preservation is nowadays considered as a must. Low grade glioma patients are now co...

The prospect of direct interaction between the brain and computers has been investigated in recent decades, revealing several potential applications. One of these is sight restoration in profoundly blind people, which is based on the ability to elicit visual perceptions while directly stimulating the occipital cortex. Technological innovation has l...

The growing number of older dependent population in Spain has incremented the demand for programmes and services aimed to provide support to (in)formal caregivers. Current legislation does not provide clear standardized practices for the results evaluation of such programmes which can constitute a guideline for public or private organizations, incl...

RYBP (Ring1 and YY 1 binding protein) is a multifunctional, intrinsically disordered protein (IDP), best described as a transcriptional regulator. It exhibits a ubiquitin-binding functionality, binds to other transcription factors, and has a key role during embryonic development. RYBP, which folds upon binding to DNA, has a Zn-finger domain at its...

Citation: Garcés-Garcés, J.; Sánchez-Martos, M.; Martinez-Navarrete, G.; Fernández-Jover, E.; Encheva, M.; León, M.; Ortiz, J.; Sastre-Santos, Á.; Fernández-Lázaro, F. New Highly Fluorescent Water Soluble Imidazolium-Perylenediimides: Synthesis and Cellular Response. Abstract: The synthesis and characterization of two new water soluble 2,6-bis(imid...

Citation: Celdrán, J.D.; Humphreys, L.; González, D.; Soto-Sánchez, C.; Martínez-Navarrete, G.; Maldonado, I.; Gallego, I.; Villate-Beitia, I.; Sainz-Ramos, M.; Puras, G.; et al. Assessment of Different Niosome Formulations for Optogenetic Applications: Morphological and Electrophysiological Effects. Abstract: Gene therapy and optogenetics are beco...

Deep Learning (DL), a groundbreaking branch of Machine Learning (ML), has emerged as a driving force in both theoretical and applied Artificial Intelligence (AI). DL algorithms, rooted in complex and non-linear artificial neural systems, excel at extracting high-level features from data. DL has demonstrated human-level performance in real-world tas...

Pseudomonas is a bacterial genus with some saprophytic species from land and others associated with opportunistic infections in humans and animals. Factors such as pathogenicity or metabolic aspects have been related to CRISPR-Cas, and in silico studies into it have focused more on the clinical and non-environmental setting. This work aimed to perf...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.bas.2023.101736.].

A myriad of systems for controlled drug release have been developed using different types of nanoparticles modified with azobenzenes moieties, either by direct UV irradiation or combined with a near-infrared...

Introduction: Pediatric hydrocephalus is highly prevalent and therefore a major neurosurgical problem in Africa. In addition to ventriculoperitoneal shunts, which have high cost and potential complications, endoscopic third ventriculostomy is becoming an increasingly popular technique especially in this part of the world. However, performing this...

Nanodiamonds were combined with niosome, and resulting formulations were named as nanodiasomes, which were evaluated in terms of physicochemical features, cellular internalization, cell viability and transfection efficiency both in in vitro and in in vivo conditions. Such parameters were analyzed at 4 and 25 °C, and at 15 and 30 days after their el...

Background: Studies have shown that symmetry plays an aesthetic role and has a positive effect on the perception of human faces. Our work hypothesizes that facial symmetry positively correlates with physical attractiveness and, thus, with higher visual evaluations of future doctors. Materials and methods: Observational study of 46 students (26 wome...

Electrical stimulation of the peripheral nervous system is a promising therapeutic option for several conditions; however, its effects on tissue and the safety of the stimulation remain poorly understood. In order to devise stimulation protocols that enhance therapeutic efficacy without the risk of causing tissue damage, we constructed computationa...

Groundbreaking advances in theoretical and applied Artificial Intelligence (AI). Deep Learning (DL) algorithms are grounded in non-linear and complex artificial neural systems that progressively extract higher-level features from data. DL is frequently compared with human-level performance in real-world tasks, such as clinical diagnostics. It is al...

Current cortical visual prosthesis approaches are primarily unidirectional and do not consider the feed-back circuits that exist in just about every part of the nervous system. Herein, we provide a brief overview of some recent developments for better controlling brain stimulation and present preliminary human data indicating that closed-loop strat...

The correct development and activity of neurons and glial cells is necessary to establish proper brain connectivity. DYRK1A encodes a protein kinase involved in the neuropathology associated with Down syndrome that influences neurogenesis and the morphological differentiation of neurons. DYRK1A loss-of-function mutations in heterozygosity cause a w...

A series of UiO-66 materials with different functional groups (-H, -NH2, and -NO2) have been evaluated for the adsorption and release of a common ocular drug such as brimonidine tartrate. UiO-66 samples were synthesized under solvothermal conditions and activated by solvent exchange with ethanol. Experimental results suggest that the incorporation...

Reaction time is a widely used measure to quantify decision-making in motor tasks. The inherent processes for decision-making, such as perception and motor production, before expressing an output can be studied with the help of electrophysiological techniques. The aim of the present work was to characterize the temporal cost of motor production and...

The large range of potential applications, not only for patients but also for healthy people, that could be achieved by affective brain-computer interface (aBCI) makes more latent the necessity of finding a commonly accepted protocol for real-time EEG-based emotion recognition. Based on wavelet package for spectral feature extraction, attending to...

The correct development and activity of neurons and glial cells is necessary to establish proper brain connectivity. DYRK1A encodes a protein kinase involved in the neuropathology associated with Down syndrome that influences neurogenesis and the morphological differentiation of neurons. DYRK1A loss-of-function mutations in heterozygosity cause a w...

Background: The correct development and activity of neurons and glial cells, and the interplay between them, is necessary to establish proper brain connectivity. DYRK1A encodes a protein kinase that influences neurogenesis and the morphological differentiation of neurons. Indeed, it is a gene associated with a risk of autism spectrum disorders. DYR...

Objective: Microstimulation via electrodes that penetrate the visual cortex creates visual perceptions called phosphenes. Besides providing electrical stimulation to induce perceptions, each electrode can be used to record the brain signals from the cortex region under the electrode which contains brain state information. Since the future visual p...

Current visual implants still provide very low resolution and limited field of view, thus limiting visual acuity in implanted patients. Developments of new strategies of artificial vision simulation systems by harnessing new advancements in technologies are of upmost priorities for the development of new visual devices. In this work, we take advant...

Radiographs of the sacroiliac joints are commonly used as the first imaging methods for the diagnosis of Sacroileitis in patients with back pain. This study aims to develop and validate a new artificial intelligence approach for the automatic classification of the grade of sacroiliitis on conventional radiographs. We included a total of 267 patient...

There are stimuli than can evoke us a feeling of connection between them. For example, we can easily appreciate differences when a musical piece is played in a continuous (legato) or discontinued way (martellato). This is called articulation, and this feature can be also applied to other sensorial modalities such as paintings or food images. In thi...

The violence - without the apparent “Gender Peace”, if data and households are examined - occurs against adult and older women, is beginning to become apparent, but there is only information from recent years. The objective is demonstrate that social isolation can be a key factor in gender peace in the case of adult and older women, even more so in...

In the field of prosthetic vision, functional assessment refers to tests that capture a person’s ability to use vision to perform everyday tasks. That includes assessments ranging from basic psychophysical tests of light perception and discrimination to performance-based tests. Visual prosthesis devices are not able to provide high-resolution visua...

In this study we have implemented and validated the Azure Kinect system for the acquisition and analysis of the human kinematics to be applied to the practical clinic for physiotherapy and rehabilitation, as well as in research studies. The progressive increase in the ageing of the world population in the first world countries, increasingly demands...

Cortical visual prostheses are a subgroup of visual prostheses which use electrical stimulation of the occipital cortex to evoke visual percepts in profoundly blind people. The stimulation approaches are usually open-loop, meaning that the stimulation is not controlled by any other factor. However, closed-loop approaches have shown advantages in ma...

Various Facial Expression Recognition (FER) systems have been studied in the field of computer vision and machine learning to encode expression information from facial representations. In this research paper, a facial emotion recognition system is proposed, addressing automatic face detection and facial expression recognition using 1) Residual Neur...

Although electrical stimulation is an established treatment option for multiple central nervous and peripheral nervous system diseases, its effects on the tissue and subsequent safety of the stimulation are not well understood. Therefore, it is crucial to design stimulation protocols that maximize therapeutic efficacy while avoiding any potential t...

The way towards the next generation of visual cortical prosthesis is visualised through an engineering cycle based on a cybernetic paradigm. Our proposal is to develop a configurable and wearable system that will generate simulated prosthetic vision, while on the other hand, perform intracortical stimulation when applied to blind patients, so that...

Nanodiamonds (NDs) are promising materials for gene delivery because of their unique physicochemical and biological features, along with their possibility of combination with other nonviral systems. Our aim was to evaluate the biophysical performance of NDs as helper components of niosomes, named nanodiasomes, to address a potential nonviral gene d...

Current teaching and training methods for surgical techniques in the pediatric population involve artificial models (manikins), animals or adult human cadavers embalmed using various techniques. We found no references in the literature concerning the use of the Thiel method in the pediatric population. The aim of this study, therefore, was to asses...

Challenges in the field of retinal prostheses motivate the development of retinal models to accurately simulate Retinal Ganglion Cells (RGCs) responses. The goal of retinal prostheses is to enable blind individuals to solve complex, reallife visual tasks. In this paper, we introduce the functional assessment (FA) of retinal models, which describes...

The main aim of this study is to show an intervention protocol for emotional deficits through the use of robotics as a therapeutic tool in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Pepper, the humanoid robot which is capable of detecting emotions and is designed to interact with people, was used together with the Empatica E4 bracelet, a portabl...

Compression of the cervical spinal cord can be caused by a wide range of causes, but the most common is cervical spondylosis (CS), a degenerative process that affects the vertebral bodies and inter-vertebral discs of the cervical spine. In CS, the severity of compression and neurological deficits varies greatly across individuals, with patients exp...

La electromiografía de superficie sEMG es una técnica no invasiva que permite registrar la señal eléctrica de los músculos A partir de esta señal se puede caracterizar la actividad de los músculos que intervienen en una actividad motriz Las técnicas clásicas de procesamiento como normalización y rectificación no permiten analizar en profundidad las...

Retinal models are needed to simulate the translation of visual percepts to Retinal Ganglion Cells (RGCs) neural spike trains, through which visual information is transmitted to the brain. Restoring vision through neural prostheses motivates the development of accurate retinal models. We integrate biologically-inspired image features to RGC models....

Challenges in the field of retinal prostheses motivate the development of retinal models to accurately simulate Retinal Ganglion Cells (RGCs) responses. The goal of retinal prostheses is to enable blind individuals to solve complex, reallife visual tasks. In this paper, we introduce the functional assessment (FA) of retinal models, which describes...

Electrical stimulation of peripheral nerves has long been used and proven effective in restoring function caused by disease or injury. Accurate placement of electrodes is often critical to properly excite the nerve and yield the desired outcome. Computational modeling is becoming an important tool that can guide the rapid development and optimizati...

Conventional rehabilitation strategies for stroke survivors become difficult when voluntary movements are severely disturbed. Combining passive limb mobilization, robotic devices and EEG-based brain-computer interfaces (BCI) systems might improve treatment and clinical follow-up of these patients, but detailed knowledge of neurophysiological mechan...

The aim of this study was to assess the potential use of a new advanced inertial navigation system for guiding dental implant placement and to compare this approach with standard stereolithographic template guiding. A movement processing unit with a 9-axis absolute orientation sensor was adapted to a surgical handpiece and wired to a computer navig...

The aim was to evaluate relevant biophysic processes related to the physicochemical features and gene transfection mechanism when sphingolipids are incorporated into a cationic niosome formulation for non-viral gene delivery to central nervous system. For that, two formulations named niosphingosomes and niosomes devoid of sphingolipid extracts, as...

Background: The aim of this study was to test the feasibility and safety of subretinal transplantation of human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-derived retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells into the healthy margins and within areas of degenerative retina in a swine model of geographic atrophy (GA). Methods: Well-delimited selective outer...

Cationic polypeptides and cationic polymers have cell-penetrating capacities and have been used in gene transfer studies. In this study, we investigate the capability of a polymer of D-lysine (PDL), a chiral form of α-Poly-lysine, as a possible nonviral vector for releasing genetic materials to neuroblastoma cells and evaluate its stability against...

This chapter aims to know the psychosocial impact and social behaviours and related to the perception of technological needs in adults and older persons with diseases, health problems and/or sensory or motor disabilities. This work delves into this reality from a gender, inclusive and, at the same time, technological, biotechnological and/or virtua...

One of the causes of nervous system degeneration is an excess of glutamate released upon several diseases. Glutamate analogs, like N-methyl-DL-aspartate (NMDA) and kainic acid (KA), have been shown to induce experimental retinal neurotoxicity. Previous results have shown that NMDA/KA neurotoxicity induces significant changes in the full field elect...

A novel therapeutic approach for glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) therapy has been carried out through in vitro and in vivo testing by using the prodrug camptothecin-20-O-(5-aminolevulinate) (CPT-ALA). The incorporation of ALA to CPT may promote uptake of the cytotoxic molecule by glioblastoma cells where the heme synthesis pathway is active, improvin...

Las metáforas visuales que se utilizan en la publicidad impresa suelen presentar una de las siguientes estructuras: dos o más objetos alineados, dos objetos combinados en uno solo, y un objeto ausente pero sugerido por el contexto. Distintas investigaciones han tratado de establecer si cada estructura visual implica un grado diferente de elaboració...