Dr. Yang

The human nervous system is one of the most complicated systems in nature. Complex nonlinear behaviours have been shown from the single neuron level to the system level. For decades, linear connectivity analysis methods, such as correlation, coherence and Granger causality, have been extensively used to assess the neural connectivities and input–output interconnections in neural systems. Recent studies indicate that these linear methods can only capture a certain amount of neural activities and functional relationships, and therefore cannot describe neural behaviours in a precise or complete way. In this lecture, I highlight recent advances in nonlinear connectivity analysis of neural systems, corresponding time and frequency domain analysis. We argue that nonlinear connectivity analysis is necessary to study neuronal processing and signal transfer in neural systems quantitatively. These approaches can hopefully provide new insights to advance our understanding of neurophysiological mechanisms underlying neural functions. These nonlinear approaches also have the potential to produce sensitive biomarkers to facilitate the development of precision diagnostic tools for evaluating neurological disorders and the effects of targeted intervention.

Biography:

Dr. Yuan Yang has an interdisciplinary background with his Bachelor's (2008) and Master’s (2010) Degrees in Biomedical Engineering (BME), and Ph.D. (July 2013, Paris, France) in Signal and Image Processing with a focus on machine learning and brain-computer interfaces. After his Ph.D., Dr. Yang had around four years of postdoctoral training in Bio-Mechanical Engineering at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands (2013-2017, Delft, Netherlands). He was a faculty member at Northwestern University (2017-2020) and the University of Oklahoma (2020-2023) before he joined University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) as an Associate Professor (tenured) in Bioengineering and Beckman Institute. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at Carle Foundation Hospital and Northwestern University. He is currently leading a multi-site engineering-based clinical study laboratory at UIUC and Carle campuses with the main research topic on neural engineering and rehabilitation. His research includes methodology development, mechanistic studies, and registered clinical trials. His research is well-funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and American Heart Association (AHA), with over 60 peer-reviewed journal articles. He has been a reviewer for NIH, NSF, AHA, and Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), and a member of Sigma Xi - The Scientific Research Honor Society, one of the oldest international honor societies in the world. He is currently serving in the IEEE Biomedical Signal Processing Technical Committee.