Bioelectric interfaces are devices that interact with bioelectric tissues. These include neuroprosthetic electrodes, which interact with the bioelectric signaling of peripheral nervous system, epimysial electrode arrays which provide multi-point observations of electromyographic activity, and membrane embedded protiens that directly alter the transmembrane potentials of muscles, nerves, and viscera. The bioelectronics lab has been at the forefront of the development of intrafascicular electrodes such as the tfLIFE, TIME structures (both invented by the lab), cuff electrodes, the rapid protyping and testing of novel designs.

LFAC block and later activation were discovered in the lab in 2016 during an attempt to effect kHFAC block using a pure tone sinusoidal stimulation waveform. We found that lowering the frequency from ~10kHz down to ~1Hz resulted in episodic nerve conduction block. Later in an attempt to block rabbit nerves in 2017 using LFAC at 10Hz sustained large level activation skeletal muscle was found. 

The Bioelectronics lab began development of biophysical models in an attempt to use them to inform tfLIFE electrode design in 2002. In 2005 the method was extended to identify the density of PS1 reaction centers needed to effect depolarization of denervated muscles. Between 2009-2014 attempts were made to better understand the quantitative discrepancy between predicted and experimentally observed measures. This led to the refinement and re-characterization of tissue parameters. With the use of the updated measures, the refined models now (2022) converge to experimental measures within the experimental variances.

Intrafascicular and intramuscular recording methods can provide high resolution measures of the activity of the nervous system. However, they are nortoriously contaminated with external noise sources and background bioelectric noise. The lab has developed custom amplifier chains, signal acquisition and processing methods to maximize the signal to noise of unit activity to enable decomposition of multi-unit recordings into putative single units using a variety of techniques.