Philip Sabes, PhD
Professor Emeritus
Physiology
School of Medicine
Philip Sabes is a Professor Emeritus at UCSF and a neurotechnology startup founder.
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Dr. Sabes received his PhD from MIT in machine learning and human motor control. He did his postdoctoral research in neurophysiology at Caltech and the Salk Institute, before joining the UCSF Department of Physiology in 2000. At UCSF, Dr. Sabes' lab studied neural computations for movement control and developed novel tools for interfacing with the primate brain.
The Sabes Lab studied how sensory and motor experience shapes movement control and the underlying brain circuits. For example, the lab showed that visual and somatosensory feedback are flexibly and adaptively combined within individual computations, enabling more precise limb movement (Sober and Sabes, 2003 & 2005). The lab then showed how this kind of flexible information flow can explain the complex sensorimotor representations seen in the primate cortex (McGuire and Sabes, 2009). They also showed how these representations are continually changing -- incorporating the statistics of recent movements to optimize the next movement (Verstynen and Sabes, 2011; Cheng and Sabes, 2006). The lab demonstrated that non-human primates can learn to use entirely novel, artificial sensory feedback as if it were a natural sensory signal. Specifically, the primates learned to interpret electrical microstimulation as multidimensional feedback about limb position. These results have clear application in delivering artificial sensory feedback via a Brain Machine Interface (Dadarlat, O'Doherty and Sabes, 2015).
The biggest bottleneck for conducting neuroscience in large brains is our limited ability to record and influence activity patterns, especially deep in the brain. To expand this ability, the lab also built new tools for Brain Interfacing. They developed the first centimeter-scale optogenetic interface in primates which allowed them to study stimulation-induced plasticity between brain areas (Yazdan-Shahmorad et al., 2016 & 2018). The lab also develop the most flexible and scalable approach to-date for electrode-based brain interfacing -- a novel "sewing-machine" approach for robotically placing many micron-scale, thin-film devices to individually specified locations even deep in the brain (Hanson, et al., 2019, in collaboration with the Maharbiz lab at UC Berkeley).
Dr. Sabes was asked to help build the founding team of Neuralink, and in 2017 he retired from UCSF in order to work full time on this groundbreaking company. While he was at Neuralink, the company refined the sewing-machine approach started in his lab, demonstrating 1000+ channels of robotically-inserted, micron-scale thin-film electrodes with a fully implanted, wireless interface. Since leaving Neuralink, Philip has focused on brain interfacing for Neuromodulation. In 2020 he co-founded Starfish Neuroscience, which is working on non-invasive Neuromodulation as well as advanced implantable brain interfaces. He is currently working on a new startup, Integral Neurotechnologies, with the goal of treating psychiatric and neurological disorders and advancing human neuroscience.
Websites
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- LinkedIn (linkedin.com)
Videos
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- Brain-Machine Interfaces (San Francisco LASER) (youtube.com)
- Neural Prosthesis Seminar (Case Western) (youtube.com)
Grants and Projects
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- Unlearning neural systems dysfunction in neuropsychiatric disorders, DARPA, 2014-2019
- Restoring proprioception via a cortical prosthesis: A novel learning-based approach, CDMRP - Spinal Cord Injury Research Program, 2014-2017
- A New Scalable Approach to High Bandwidth, Minimally Invasive Neural Recording and Stimulation, DARPA, 2015-2017
- Visuomotor adaptation in reaching, NIH, 2004-2013
Publications (32)
Top publication keywords:
Models, NeurologicalFeedback, SensoryMotor CortexProprioceptionVisual PerceptionOptogeneticsPsychomotor PerformanceNerve NetSensationArmFeedback, PsychologicalMacaca mulattaMovementSomatosensory CortexUnsupervised Machine Learning
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Targeted cortical reorganization using optogenetics in non-human primates.
eLife 2018 Yazdan-Shahmorad A, Silversmith DB, Kharazia V, Sabes PN -
A Large-Scale Interface for Optogenetic Stimulation and Recording in Nonhuman Primates.
Neuron 2016 Yazdan-Shahmorad A, Diaz-Botia C, Hanson TL, Kharazia V, Ledochowitsch P, Maharbiz MM, Sabes PN -
A learning-based approach to artificial sensory feedback leads to optimal integration.
Nature neuroscience 2014 Dadarlat MC, O'Doherty JE, Sabes PN -
How each movement changes the next: an experimental and theoretical study of fast adaptive priors in reaching.
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience 2011 Verstynen T, Sabes PN -
Sensory transformations and the use of multiple reference frames for reach planning.
Nature neuroscience 2009 McGuire LM, Sabes PN -
Flexible strategies for sensory integration during motor planning.
Nature neuroscience 2005 Sober SJ, Sabes PN
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Rotational dynamics in motor cortex are consistent with a feedback controller.
eLife 2021 Kalidindi HT, Cross KP, Lillicrap TP, Omrani M, Falotico E, Sabes PN, Scott SH -
An Open Resource for Non-human Primate Optogenetics.
Neuron 2020 Tremblay S, Acker L, Afraz A, Albaugh DL, Amita H, Andrei AR, Angelucci A, Aschner A, Balan PF, Basso MA, Benvenuti G, Bohlen MO, Caiola MJ, Calcedo R, Cavanaugh J, Chen Y, Chen S, Chernov MM, Clark … -
Cortical Stimulation Induces Network-Wide Coherence Change In Non-Human Primate Somatosensory Cortex.
Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Annual International Conference 2019 Bloch JA, Khateeb K, Silversmith DB, O'Doherty JE, Sabes PN, Yazdan-Shahmorad A -
Convection Enhanced Delivery of Optogenetic Adeno-associated Viral Vector to the Cortex of Rhesus Macaque Under Guidance of Online MRI Images.
Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE 2019 Khateeb K, Griggs DJ, Sabes PN, Yazdan-Shahmorad A -
The “sewing machine” for minimally invasive neural recording
bioRxiv 2019 Timothy L. Hanson, Camilo A. Diaz-Botia, Viktor Kharazia, Michel M Maharbiz, Philip N. Sabes -
Novel techniques for large-scale manipulations of cortical networks in non-human primates.
Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Annual International Conference 2018 Yazdan-Shahmorad A, Silversmith DB, Sabes PN -
Superior arm-movement decoding from cortex with a new, unsupervised-learning algorithm.
Journal of neural engineering 2018 Makin JG, O'Doherty JE, Cardoso MMB, Sabes PN -
Widespread optogenetic expression in macaque cortex obtained with MR-guided, convection enhanced delivery (CED) of AAV vector to the thalamus.
Journal of neuroscience methods 2017 Yazdan-Shahmorad A, Tian N, Kharazia V, Samaranch L, Kells A, Bringas J, He J, Bankiewicz K, Sabes PN -
A silicon carbide array for electrocorticography and peripheral nerve recording.
Journal of neural engineering 2017 Diaz-Botia CA, Luna LE, Neely RM, Chamanzar M, Carraro C, Carmena JM, Sabes PN, Maboudian R, Maharbiz MM -
Neural Representation and Causal Models in Motor Cortex.
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience 2017 Chaisanguanthum KS, Shen HH, Sabes PN -
Encoding and Decoding of Multi-Channel ICMS in Macaque Somatosensory Cortex.
IEEE transactions on haptics 2016 Dadarlat MC, Sabes PN -
Learning to Estimate Dynamical State with Probabilistic Population Codes.
PLoS computational biology 2015 Makin JG, Dichter BK, Sabes PN -
Strategies for optical control and simultaneous electrical readout of extended cortical circuits.
Journal of neuroscience methods 2015 Ledochowitsch P, Yazdan-Shahmorad A, Bouchard KE, Diaz-Botia C, Hanson TL, He JW, Seybold BA, Olivero E, Phillips EA, Blanche TJ, Schreiner CE, Hasenstaub A, Chang EF, Sabes PN, Maharbiz MM -
Motor variability arises from a slow random walk in neural state.
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience 2014 Chaisanguanthum KS, Shen HH, Sabes PN -
Learning multisensory integration and coordinate transformation via density estimation.
PLoS computational biology 2013 Makin JG, Fellows MR, Sabes PN -
Heterogeneous representations in the superior parietal lobule are common across reaches to visual and proprioceptive targets.
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience 2011 McGuire LM, Sabes PN -
Sensory integration for reaching: models of optimality in the context of behavior and the underlying neural circuits.
Progress in brain research 2011 Sabes PN -
Visual-shift adaptation is composed of separable sensory and task-dependent effects.
Journal of neurophysiology 2007 Simani MC, McGuire LM, Sabes PN -
Calibration of visually guided reaching is driven by error-corrective learning and internal dynamics.
Journal of neurophysiology 2007 Cheng S, Sabes PN -
Modeling sensorimotor learning with linear dynamical systems.
Neural computation 2006 Cheng S, Sabes PN -
Multisensory integration during motor planning.
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience 2003 Sober SJ, Sabes PN -
Parietal representation of object-based saccades.
Journal of neurophysiology 2002 Sabes PN, Breznen B, Andersen RA -
The planning and control of reaching movements.
Current opinion in neurobiology 2000 Sabes PN -
The role of inertial sensitivity in motor planning.
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience 1998 Sabes PN, Jordan MI, Wolpert DM -
Obstacle avoidance and a perturbation sensitivity model for motor planning.
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience 1997 Sabes PN, Jordan MI -
New icosahedral phases in Ti-transition-metal alloys.
Physical review. B, Condensed matter 1988 Kelton KF, Gibbons PC, Sabes PN