Imaging Neurosci (Camb)
April 2025
The brain consists of a multiplicity of networks with massively interacting nodes. Disruption of a node following brain damage can result in both short- and long-distance functional abnormalities, affecting even intact brain regions remote from the site of lesion (termed 'diaschisis'). Diaschisis has been well described previously, and structural and functional connectivity have been related to clinical findings.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Neurosurg Case Lessons
April 2025
Background: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) and responsive neurostimulation are increasingly being used to treat drug-resistant epilepsy (DRE). However, patients who experience partial or limited improvement in seizure control could require additional surgical interventions or refinement of their epilepsy network characterization, including further stereo-electroencephalography (SEEG) investigations. SEEG in the setting of previously implanted hardware demonstrates a myriad of technical challenges.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnnu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc
July 2024
Invasive deep-brain stimulation is increasingly being investigated as a treatment for neural disorders. A non-invasive alternative for deep-brain neuromodulation would likely broaden the range of application. However, existing techniques, such as transcranial electrical or magnetic stimulation (TES, TMS), are limited in their depth of stimulation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnnu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc
July 2024
Collecting electroencephalography (EEG) data from individuals with coarse, curly, or afro-textured hair can be challenging, leading to noisier data, negative clinical outcomes (e.g., risk of misdiagnosis, discomfort, longer setup times, unsavory treatment, hair shaving, and microaggressions), and unreliable basic science conclusions due to the disproportionate exclusion of people with this physical feature worldwide.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Neural Eng
February 2025
Transcranial electrical stimulation (TES) is an effective technique to modulate brain activity and treat diseases. However, TES is primarily used to stimulate superficial brain regions and is unable to reach deeper targets. The spread of injected currents in the head is affected by volume conduction and the additional spreading of currents as they move through head layers with different conductivities, as is discussed in Forssell(2021046042).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSignificance: Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a non-invasive optical method that measures changes in hemoglobin concentration and oxygenation. The measured light intensity is susceptible to reduced signal quality due to the presence of melanin.
Aim: We quantify the influence of melanin concentration on NIRS measurements taken with a frequency-domain near-infrared spectroscopy system using 690 and 830 nm.
Commun Biol
September 2024
Temporal interference (TI) stimulation is a popular non-invasive neurostimulation technique that utilizes the following salient neural behavior: pure sinusoid (generated in off-target brain regions) appears to cause no stimulation, whereas modulated sinusoid (generated in target brain regions) does. To understand its effects and mechanisms, we examine responses of different cell types, excitatory pyramidal (Pyr) and inhibitory parvalbumin-expressing (PV) neurons, to pure and modulated sinusoids, in intact network as well as in isolation. In intact network, we present data showing that PV neurons are much less likely than Pyr neurons to exhibit TI stimulation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnnu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc
July 2023
The effect of electrical stimulation on neurons depends on the spatiotemporal properties of the applied electric field as well as on the biophysical properties of the neural tissue, which includes geometric and electrical characteristics of the cells, and the neural circuit dynamics. In this work, we characterize the effect of electric field direction on neural response in cortical layers. This can, for instance, enable more efficient (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnnu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc
July 2023
A quantitative method of analyzing EEG signals after stroke onset can help monitor disease progression and tailor treatments. In this work, we present an EEG-based imaging algorithm to estimate the location and size of the stroke infarct core and penumbra tissues. Building on recent advancements in localizing neural silences, we develop an algorithm that utilizes known spectral properties of the infarct core and penumbra to separately localize them.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnnu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc
July 2023
Recent work has noted a skin-color bias in existing pulse oximetry systems in their estimation of arterial oxygen saturation. Frequently, the algorithm used by these systems estimate a "ratio-of-ratios", called the "R-value", on their way to estimating the oxygen saturation. In this work, we focus on an "SNR-related" bias that is due to noise in measurements.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnnu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc
July 2023
We present an end-to-end Spatial-Temporal Graph Attention Network (STGAT) for non-invasive detection and width estimation of Cortical Spreading Depressions (CSDs) on scalp electroencephalography (EEG). Our algorithm, that we refer to as CSD Spatial-temporal graph attention network or CSD-STGAT, is trained and tested on simulated CSDs with varying width and speed ranges. Using high-density EEG, CSD-STGAT achieves less than 10.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Spreading depolarizations (SDs) are a biomarker and a potentially treatable mechanism of worsening brain injury after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Noninvasive detection of SDs could transform critical care for brain injury patients but has remained elusive. Current methods to detect SDs are based on invasive intracranial recordings with limited spatial coverage.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Theor Biol
September 2023
Cortical spreading depolarization (CSD) is a neuropathological condition involving propagating waves of neuronal silence, and is related to multiple diseases, such as migraine aura, traumatic brain injury (TBI), stroke, and cardiac arrest, as well as poor outcome of patients. While CSDs of different severity share similar roots on the ion exchange level, they can lead to different vascular responses (namely spreading hyperemia and spreading ischemia). In this paper, we propose a mathematical model relating neuronal activities to predict vascular changes as measured with near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and fMRI recordings, and apply it to the extreme case of CSD, where sustained near-complete neuronal depolarization is seen.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFElectroencephalography (EEG) and diffuse optical tomography (DOT) are imaging methods which are widely used for neuroimaging. While the temporal resolution of EEG is high, the spatial resolution is typically limited. DOT, on the other hand, has high spatial resolution, but the temporal resolution is inherently limited by the slow hemodynamics it measures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIEEE Trans Biomed Eng
December 2023
Objective: Using data-driven methods to design stimuli (e.g., electrical currents) which evoke desired neural responses in different neuron-types for applications in treating neural disorders.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTranscranial electrical neuromodulation of the central nervous system is used as a non-invasive method to induce neural and behavioral responses, yet targeted non-invasive electrical stimulation of the brain with high spatial resolution remains elusive. This work demonstrates a focused, steerable, high-density epicranial current stimulation (HD-ECS) approach to evoke neural activity. Custom-designed high-density (HD) flexible surface electrode arrays are employed to apply high-resolution pulsed electric currents through skull to achieve localized stimulation of the intact mouse brain.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFScientists around the globe are joining the race to achieve engineering feats to read, write, modulate, and interface with the human brain in a broadening continuum of invasive to non-invasive ways. The expansive implications of neurotechnology for our conception of health, mind, decision-making, and behavior has raised social and ethical considerations that are inextricable from neurotechnological progress. We propose "socio-technical" challenges as a framing to integrate neuroethics into the engineering process.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnnu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc
November 2021
Transcranial Electrical Stimulation (TES) is a promising tool for treating many neurological disorders, but it classically results in diffused stimulation. Many optimization algorithms have been proposed for focusing TES, commonly by creating multi-electrode arrangements and choosing current amplitudes such that the resulting current fields in the brain are focused in the target region, and are as small as possible outside the target region. Consequently, it is likely that such optimization does not harness the non-linear nature of neural dynamics, particularly their thresholding phenomenon, i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Neurosci
November 2021
Traditionally, recording from and stimulating the brain with high spatial and temporal resolution required invasive means. However, recently, the technical capabilities of less invasive and non-invasive neuro-interfacing technology have been dramatically improving, and laboratories and funders aim to further improve these capabilities. These technologies can facilitate functions such as multi-person communication, mood regulation and memory recall.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIndividuals with migraine generally experience photophobia and/or phonophobia during and between migraine attacks. Many different mechanisms have been postulated to explain these migraine phenomena including abnormal patterns of connectivity across the cortex. The results, however, remain contradictory and there is no clear consensus on the nature of the cortical abnormalities in migraine.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA rapid and cost-effective noninvasive tool to detect and characterize neural silences can be of important benefit in diagnosing and treating many disorders. We propose an algorithm, SilenceMap, for uncovering the absence of electrophysiological signals, or neural silences, using noninvasive scalp electroencephalography (EEG) signals. By accounting for the contributions of different sources to the power of the recorded signals, and using a hemispheric baseline approach and a convex spectral clustering framework, SilenceMap permits rapid detection and localization of regions of silence in the brain using a relatively small amount of EEG data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResponsive neurostimulation (RNS) is an effective treatment for controlling seizures in patients with drug-resistant focal epilepsy who are not suitable candidates for resection surgery. A lack of tools for detecting and characterizing potential response biomarkers, however, contributes to a limited understanding of mechanisms by which RNS improves seizure control. We developed a method to quantify ictal frequency modulation, previously identified as a biomarker of clinical responsiveness to RNS.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhen currents are injected into the scalp, e.g. during transcranial current stimulation, the resulting currents generated in the brain are substantially affected by the changes in conductivity and geometry of intermediate tissue.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFElectroencephalography (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) are both commonly used methodologies for neuronal source reconstruction. While EEG has high temporal resolution (millisecond-scale), its spatial resolution is on the order of centimeters. On the other hand, in comparison to EEG, fNIRS, or diffuse optical tomography (DOT), when used for source reconstruction, can achieve relatively high spatial resolution (millimeter-scale), but its temporal resolution is poor because the hemodynamics that it measures evolve on the order of several seconds.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLocalization of the epileptogenic zone (EZ) is crucial in the surgical treatment of focal epilepsy. Recently, EEG studies have revealed that the EZ exhibits abnormal connectivity, which has led investigators to now consider connectivity as a biomarker to localize the EZ. Further, abnormal connectivity of the EZ may provide an explanation for the impact of focal epilepsy on more widespread brain networks involved in typical cognition and development.
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