Visualizing the language of the brain in sensorimotor integration
Theme: Medical Visualisation
People: Dr Bas Koekoek (EMC), Dr Charl P. Botha (TUD)
Description
Sensorimotor integration results from interacting processes distributed over the cerebellar and cerebral cortices. It is our hypothesis that for sensorimotor integration to take place properly the spatiotemporal spiking-patterns of the output neurons in the cerebellar cortex have to act and oscillate coherently with respect to those in the cerebral cortex. The SENSOPAC (http://www.sensopac.org/) project set out to develop an artifical cognitive system that can solve complex sensorimotor integration using active sensing in a biological manner. Such systems could then be used as true brain-machine interfaces in e.g. prosthetics or interfaces to the outside world in so called 'locked in' syndrome.
To achieve this we first have to understand how the biological brain achieves this task. As a model system the rodent whisker system is used. Ongoing sets of experiments have already yielded a large database of multineuronal ensembles of spike data in relation to high speed whisker tracking of awake mice. The data has different modalities. 1) Highspeed video (hours of 1000fps of full frame video) of whisker movements, 2) neuronal spike traces (raw analog neuronal recordings, 32 simulatuous channels at 25kHz), 3) neuronal spike code (timestamps of spikes of detected neurons) and 4 recording positions (relative to our setups reference frame). In addition a standardized mouse brain including a coordinate system (in a book) is available.
The goal of this project would be to develop a method that allows us to visualize the ensembles of recorded neuronal spike patterns in time in relation to the whisking behavior. The developed system will be able to cope with 700 megabytes per second of video data, with a few hours of recording for each experiment, as well as synchronized neuronal spikes, and will enable us to visually explore the data for interesting new patterns and relations.
More information
If you are interested in the possibilities of doing your M.Sc. project as part of this research or you would just like more information, please contact Dr Bas Koekoek at <s.koekkoek@erasmusmc.nl> or Dr Charl P. Botha at <c.p.botha@tudelft.nl>.
Also take a look at:
this article in the Wall Street Journal about a related project. In the included video, the research at the EMC is also mentioned!