Cortical Metrics, a spinout company pioneered by BME core faculty members Mark Tommerdahl and Bob Dennis, has been selected as one of the winners for the first round of GE & NFL’s $20M Head Health Challenges. GE & NFL have partnered together in this program to promote research in both the expedient diagnosis and treatment of mild traumatic brain injury in athletes, members of the military, and society overall. As a round one winner, Cortical Metrics is one of sixteen initial awardees who will receive $300,000 in funding; the sixteen winners were selected from a competitive pool of well over 400 applicants from 27 countries. In 2015, six of these round one winners will be selected to receive $500,000 in funding to continue their research.
The funding for Cortical Metrics comes for its device, shaped like a computer mouse and able to connect to any desktop or laptop, which uses both vibrations and the patient’s ability to sense those vibrations to measure the severity of a concussion. The vibrations activate adjacent places of the brain that typically communicate with each other—the key is that these communications characteristically deteriorate with the severity of the concussion and improve with the patient’s recovery. Cortical Metrics, in collaboration with the Tommerdahl and Dennis research groups, is working on a web-based computer program to measure brain health by determining the quality of communication between these adjacent brain areas. This work will increase the device’s portability and expedite the diagnosis of concussion. Congratulations to Dr. Tommerdahl and Cortical Metrics on their award and well-deserved recognition!
To read about all the funded projects in the first round of GE and NFL’s Head Health Challenges, take a look at the article from Reuters.