Cognitive Neuroscience (INM-3)

Research Topics

Recent techniques in computational neuroscience allow us to assess interregional interactions from times series acquired using in-vivo techniques like electroencephalography (EEG) or functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). These techniques have provided first insights as to how areas assemble into functional networks depending on the motor task. However, our knowledge on the neural processes that encode individual movements and how they are changed during stroke is relatively poor.

Here, generative models and network simulations have the great advantage to decompose the complexity of neural mass activity into a set of equations that explain most of the behavioural variance. Unveiling the network dynamics underlying specific motor actions further advances our understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms that enable the brain to interact with the environment.

The aim of our research group is to construct mathematical models of the neuronal network dynamics underlying motor actions in healthy humans and stroke patients, using recordings of individual brain activity (EEG and fMRI). Numerical simulations of oscillatory networks and the analysis of their complex dynamics will allow us to explain the neuronal dynamics underlying motor behaviour in healthy and pathological conditions and to formulate hypotheses of how dysfunctional network dynamics and hence motor deficits can be remedied. Such information is crucial for developing novel treatment strategies of neurological diseases by uncovering ways of restoring disrupted network activity to nearly normal one.