Connecting The ROIs
2nd Ph.D. Day
April 3, 2015
Zebrastraat 32, Ghent
Institute for Neuroscience
MRP Integrative Neuroscience of Behavioral Control
Prof. dr. Paul Tiesinga
Donders Institute
Topic: The development and adoption of new molecular neuroscience techniques together with improved imaging techniques have not only given us an unprecedented view of the dynamics & structure of the brain up to cellular resolution but also the ability to manipulate this activity. Neuroscience institutions, with the Allen Institute for Brain Science leading the pack, are utilizing these advances to start a neuroscience program on an industrial scale and making massive amounts of data available for further analysis. These newfound capabilities mean that neuroscience has truly entered the Big Data era, and demonstrate the need for better ICT technologies to store, organize, access and analyze these data as well as machine learning approaches to mine it. Furthermore, to obtain the insights necessary for translational neuroscience, it is necessary to integrate these data into computational models that link multiple spatial scales and cover long-time scales that characterize neural development and aging. I will present my view of the new opportunities that lie ahead in understanding the brain and the challenges these present for computational neuroscience and neuroinformatics. I will illustrate these issues by discussing some new insights in local circuit dynamics in terms dynamical motifs and the manipulation thereof by optogenetic means.
Prof. Paul Tiesinga is a neuroscientist and an authority in the field of neuroinformatics. His research focuses on information processing in the brain and the role of oscillations. For this purpose he builds computational models of the cortex and develops methods to analyze the signals produced by these simulations as well as signals recorded from the brain. Prof. Tiesinga was Director of the Donders Center for Neuroscience of the Radboud University Nijmegen from 2010-2014 and is presently heading the Neuroinformatics department. We are very happy to welcome Prof. Tiesinga and are looking forward to his keynote lecture on ‘The Future of Neuroscience: the emerging applications of complex technology and engineering.'
The past 15years have provided an unprecedented collection of discoveries that bear upon our scientific understanding of recovery of consciousness in the human brain following severe brain damage. Highlighted among these discoveries are unique demonstrations that patients with little or no behavioral evidence of conscious awareness may retain critical cognitive capacities and the first scientific demonstrations that some patients, with severely injured brains and very longstanding conditions of limited behavioral responsiveness, may nonetheless harbor latent capacities for recovery. Included among such capacities are particularly human functions of language and higher-level cognition that either spontaneously or through direct interventions may reemerge even at long time intervals or remain unrecognized.
When patients in “persistent vegetative state” (recently also coined unresponsive wakefulness syndrome) show minimal signs of consciousness but are unable to reliably communicate the term minimally responsive or minimally conscious state (MCS) is used. MCS was recently subcategorized based on the complexity of patients' behaviors: MCS+ describes high-level behavioral responses (i.e., command following, intelligible verbalizations or non-functional communication) and MCS- describes low-level behavioral responses (i.e., visual pursuit, localization of noxious stimulation or contingent behavior such as appropriate smiling or crying to emotional stimuli). Patients who show non-behavioral evidence of consciousness or communication only measurable via ancillary testing (i.e., functional MRI, positron emission tomography, EEG or evoked potentials) can be considered to be in a functional locked-in syndrome.
An improved assessment of brain function in coma and related states is not only changing nosology and medical care but also offers a better-documented diagnosis and prognosis and helps to further identify the neural correlates of human consciousness. Taken together, recent studies show that awareness is an emergent property of the collective behavior of frontoparietal top-down connectivity. Within this network, external (sensory) awareness depends on lateral prefrontal/parietal cortices while internal (self) awareness correlates with precuneal/mesiofrontal midline activity. Of clinical importance, this knowledge now permits to improve the diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of patients with disorders of consciousness, which currently remains very challenging. New technological advances now also permit to show command-specific changes in fMRI, EEG or eye-pupil measurements providing motor-independent evidence of conscious thoughts and in come cases even of communication. We will conclude by discussing related ethical issues and the challenge of improving our clinical care and quality of life in these challenging patients with disorders of consciousness.
Prof. dr. Steven Laureys is Clinical Professor at the University of Liège and Research Director at the Belgian National Fund of Scientific Research. He graduated as a Medical Doctor from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Drawn by functional neuroimaging, he moved to the Cyclotron Research Center at the University of Liège, where he studied residual brain function in coma, vegetative, minimally conscious and locked-in states. He is board-certified in neurology and in palliative and end-of-life medicine. Presently, he is invited professor at the Collège Belgique (Belgian Royal Academy of Sciences) and chair of the "European Neurological Society Subcommittee on Coma and disorders of consciousness”. He leads the Coma Science Group at the Cyclotron Research Center and Department of Neurology, Sart Tilman Liège University Hospital.
Prof. dr. Steven Laureys
Université de Liège
The Future of Neuroscience
Cracking the Neural Code of Consciousness