[Neuroinfo] PhD position in Computational modeling for brain dynamics time-variance evoked by noninvasive brain stimulation

[Mitsuhiro.Hayashibe at inria.fr]

PhD position with INRIA Montpellier, France
Application due by 31th March,  position can start from September or later

Title: Computational modeling for brain dynamics time-variance evoked by 
noninvasive brain stimulation
Key words: Computational modeling, Neuroplasticity, Adaptive tracking, Brain 
dynamics, Signal processing 
Summary of overall project: 
Stroke is caused when an artery carrying blood from heart to an area in the 
brain bursts or a clot obstructs the blood flow thereby preventing delivery of 
oxygen and nutrients. About half of the stroke survivors are left with some 
degree of disability where the impairment of motor control has been mentioned 
most frequently as the most important disability. Therefore, innovative 
methodologies for stroke neurorehabilitation are urgently required to reduce 
long-term disability. 
Neuroplasticity is the ability of the central nervous system to respond to 
intrinsic or extrinsic stimuli by reorganizing its structure, function and 
connections. Neuroplasticity is involved in post-stroke restorative 
rehabilitation of upper-limb function, but also can cause maladaptive functional 
outcomes, which can compromise re-gain of function via implementation of sub-
optimal compensatory movement strategies. Such neuroplastic changes can be 
facilitated with noninvasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques, such as 
transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). tDCS- an electrically based 
intervention directed at the central nervous system level - is a  promising  
tool  to  facilitate  neuroplasticity  in  stroke  rehabilitation [1].  
In this work, we investigate on a physiological signal changes appearing on 
functional  near-infrared  spectroscopy  (fNIRS)  and electroencephalography  
(EEG)  neuroimaging  systems  to  objectively  quantify  the progress of a 
chosen tDCS treatment regime, correlating outcome with brain activation patterns 
as a marker of the underlying neuronal plasticity [2]. Here, it was postulated 
that tDCS leads to a rapid dynamic variations of the  brain  cell  
microenvironment  (Dietzel  and  Heinemann  1986)  that  perturbs  hemodynamic  
(fNIRS)  and electrophysiological  (EEG)  responses  where  the  interactions  
between  the  hemodynamic  and electrophysiological  responses,  captured  with  
NIRS-EEG  joint  modeling,  may  provide  an  assessment  of neurovascular  
coupling.  Such  an  approach  is  novel  since  it  introduces  neuroimaging  
in  a  field  so  far  not accessible by existing technology. We use adaptive 
identification techniques to correspond to the time-variances as previously 
applied to other application for muscular response changes as in [3].

[1] Nitsche MA, Paulus W. Excitability changes induced in the human motor cortex 
by weak transcranial direct current stimulation. J Physiol. 2000 527 Pt 3:633-9. 
 
[2] Dutta A, Paulus W, Nitsche MA. Facilitating myoelectric-control with 
transcranial direct current stimulation: a preliminary study on healthy. J 
Neuroeng Rehabil. 2014;11:13. doi: 10.1186/1743-0003-11-13.

[3] Q. Zhang, M. Hayashibe, C. Azevedo-Coste, Evoked Electromyography-Based 
Closed-Loop Torque Control in Functional Electrical Stimulation, IEEE 
Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, vol.60, no.8, pp.2299-2307, 2013.

Supervisor: Mitsuhiro Hayashibe (Demar, France)
Co-Supervisor: Anirban Dutta (Demar, France and in collaboration with Prof. 
Nitsche, Georg-August-University, Germany)