FWO Sabbatical Prof. Daniele Marinazzo

Large scale noninvasive neuroimaging relies on advanced data analysis and statistics. In turn new data and experiments provide benchmark and validation of existing methods, as well as motivation for new methods and theories. My sabbatical leave will go in this twofold direction, at an institution which is best placed to boost this synergy. I’ll mainly focus on brain oscillations.  One way of probing the function (or malfunctioning) of the brain is to make waves in it, inducing oscillations at given frequencies with specific stimuli. The standard way of studying these waves is to compare the brain rhythm with some mathematically idealized features, perfect oscillations called sines and cosines. While powerful and elegant this approach risks to miss out or to misinterpret some oscillatory properties, in particular in presence of non-oscillatory activity (which is always there), and of irregular waveform shapes. I plan to detect non-oscillatory activity and quantify the shape of oscillations, and using all this information together to better characterize induced brain waves. The second goal is to associate properties of these oscillations (amplitude, frequency, shape), which albeit interesting remain data features, to neurophysiological parameters. I will develop a set of biologically realistic models which will allow to pin modulations and generation of brain waves to quantities such as synaptic connections, excitation and inhibition between neuronal populations. Another focus point of the sabbatical is the application of methods that I have already proposed and validated, to specific clinical settings. The first one is the retrieval of the hemodynamic response function from resting state fMRI data, which I will test on data from neurological patients, in particular stroke patients, for which the hemodynamic response is abnormal.  The second one consists in the exploration of muscle synergies (joint activation) in controlled rehabilitation experiments.