Gerald E. Loeb

About

Dr. Gerald E. Loeb is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Neurology at the University of Southern California. He holds a Doctoral Degree in Medicine from Johns Hopkins University, where he also earned his Bachelor's Degree in Human Biology. His training includes surgery at the University of Arizona. Dr. Loeb has extensive experience, having spent 15 years in the Laboratory of Neural Control at the National Institutes of Health and 12 years at Queen’s University, where he served as Professor of Physiology and Director of the Bio-Medical Engineering Unit. His research focuses on neural prosthetics, specifically interfaces between electronic devices and the nervous system to replace sensory and motor functions and address neurological dysfunctions. He was one of the developers of the cochlear implant used to restore hearing in deaf individuals and continues to work on improving this technology. His group developed BIONs—BIOnic Neurons—that can be injected into paralyzed muscles to receive power and communicate via radio links with external controllers. Additionally, he contributed to the development of the BioTac, a biomimetic tactile sensor now commercialized by SynTouch Inc. Dr. Loeb’s work also involves basic neurophysiological studies of the sensorimotor nervous system to understand biological control mechanisms, with efforts to develop models and interfaces for reanimating paralyzed limbs through functional electrical stimulation and for designing powered prosthetic…

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Psychology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Neuroscience
• Biology
• Mathematics
• Human–computer interaction
• Cognitive psychology

Selected publications

• Learning to Use Muscles

  Journal of Human Kinetics · 2021 · 43 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  The human musculoskeletal system is highly complex mechanically. Its neural control must deal successfully with this complexity to perform the diverse, efficient, robust and usually graceful behaviors of which humans are capable. Most of those behaviors might be performed by many different subsets of its myriad possible states, so how does the nervous system decide which subset to use? One solution that has received much attention over the past 50 years would be for the nervous system to be fund…

  DOI

• The influence of temporal predictability on express visuomotor responses

  Journal of Neurophysiology · 2020 · 41 citations

  Express stimulus-driven responses in humans have been proposed to be originated subcortically via the superior colliculus. These short-latency responses are facilitated by the presentation of dynamic visual stimuli. Here, we show that this facilitation is related to the predictable target timing, regardless of its kinematic attributes. We propose that the superior colliculus can be primed to generate express stimulus-driven motor responses via cortical top-down projection.

  DOI

• A hierarchical sensorimotor control framework for human-in-the-loop robotic hands

  Science Robotics · 2023-05-17 · 32 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior author

  Human manual dexterity relies critically on touch. Robotic and prosthetic hands are much less dexterous and make little use of the many tactile sensors available. We propose a framework modeled on the hierarchical sensorimotor controllers of the nervous system to link sensing to action in human-in-the-loop, haptically enabled, artificial hands.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Express Visuomotor Responses Reflect Knowledge of Both Target Locations and Contextual Rules during Reaches of Different Amplitudes

  Journal of Neuroscience · 2023-09-15 · 21 citations

  articleOpen access

  When humans reach to visual targets, extremely rapid (∼90 ms) target-directed responses can be observed in task-relevant proximal muscles. Such express visuomotor responses are inflexibly locked in time and space to the target and have been proposed to reflect rapid visuomotor transformations conveyed subcortically via the tecto-reticulo-spinal pathway. Previously, we showed that express visuomotor responses are sensitive to explicit cue-driven information about the target, suggesting that the e…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Remembrance of things perceived: Adding thalamocortical function to artificial neural networks

  Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience · 2023-03-07 · 5 citations

  reviewOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Recent research has illuminated the complexity and importance of the thalamocortical system but it has been difficult to identify what computational functions it performs. Meanwhile, deep-learning artificial neural networks (ANNs) based on bio-inspired models of purely cortical circuits have achieved surprising success solving sophisticated cognitive problems associated historically with human intelligence. Nevertheless, the limitations and shortcomings of artificial intelligence (AI) based on s…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01EB002094

  NIH · $4.6M · 2008

• MRI: Development of a Tactile Sensing Hand+Arm for Robotic Haptics

  NSF · $452k · 2009–2013

• NIH Grant R01NS027193

  NIH · $467k · 1992

Frequent coauthors

• F.J.R. Richmond

  University of Southern California

  83 shared

• C. A. Pratt

  45 shared

• Cheryl M. Chanaud

  Memorial Hermann–Texas Medical Center

  35 shared

• Brian D. Corneil

  Robarts Clinical Trials

  24 shared

• Jeremy A. Fishel

  24 shared

• Rahman Davoodi

  23 shared

• Nicholas Wettels

  23 shared

• W. B. Marks

  18 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Biomedical Engineering

  University of Southern California

  1990

• M.S., Biomedical Engineering

  University of Southern California

  1986

• B.S., Biomedical Engineering

  University of Southern California

  1984

Awards & honors

• U. S. Public Health Service Commendation Medal
• American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering Fe…
• National Academy of Sciences International Exchange Fellowsh…
• Queen's University Queen's National Scholar
• Seeing Eye, Inc. Fellowship

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