We are seeking a PhD candidate at GRAMFC (Amiens, France) to evaluate the impact of music exposure during fetal life on the development of rhythm perception, tested at birth using electroencephalography.

Several positions for postdoctoral scholars in cognitive/affective neuroscience and neuroengineering! The Precision Neuromodulation Lab at Northwestern University in Chicago is actively recruiting (https://sites.northwestern.edu/neuromodlab). We develop and experimentally apply closed-loop brain stimulation and electroencephalography (EEG) for human mood regulation, decision-making, and memory research. The leading methods in the lab include transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) with Neuronavigation and Robotic Guidance, Electroencephalography (EEG), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation (tACS), Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of brain stimulation, and Computational Cognitive Testing and Modeling. Postdocs will get exceptional prospects for shaping the future of precision brain stimulation therapies. We offer a highly interdisciplinary environment, tailored mentoring, and extensive support for career development, ensuring that you can grow and succeed in your field. There are plenty of on-site and national opportunities for collaborations with clinical neuroscience and biomedical engineering groups, formal and informal training, and access to research-dedicated MRI scanners, computational servers, and human phenotyping resources. The candidate will be expected to build a consistent publication record, contribute to applications for extramural funding, collaborate with other team members and outside groups, attend national meetings, and effectively communicate research findings. The position is initially offered for one year with up to three years extension. It comes with a comprehensive benefits package, including health, dental, vision, disability insurance, retirement benefits, and childcare support (see more at postdocs.northwestern.edu), and a competitive salary range of $61,000-$74,000 per year, dependent on the candidate’s background and experience. Contact Dr. Ivan Alekseichuk for more details (ivan.alekseichuk@northwestern.edu). Include a brief cover letter in the email’s body, attach a CV and representative examples of research work. The recommendations will be solicitated at an advanced interview stage.

Fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) has emerged as a promising tool for assessing cognitive function in individuals with dementia. This technique leverages electroencephalography (EEG) to measure brain responses to rapidly presented visual stimuli, offering a non-invasive and objective method for evaluating a range of cognitive functions. Unlike traditional cognitive assessments, FPVS does not rely on behavioural responses, making it particularly suitable for individuals with cognitive impairment. In this talk I will highlight a series of studies that have demonstrated its ability to detect subtle deficits in recognition memory, visual processing and attention in dementia patients using EEG in the lab, at home and in clinic. The method is quick, cost-effective, and scalable, utilizing widely available EEG technology. FPVS holds significant potential as a functional biomarker for early diagnosis and monitoring of dementia, paving the way for timely interventions and improved patient outcomes.

Electroencephalography (EEG) has been thoroughly studied for decades in psychiatry research. Yet its integration into clinical practice as a diagnostic/prognostic tool remains unachieved. We hypothesize that a key reason is the underlying patient's heterogeneity, overlooked in psychiatric EEG research relying on a case-control approach. We combine HD-EEG with normative modeling to quantify this heterogeneity using two well-established and extensively investigated EEG characteristics -spectral power and functional connectivity- across a cohort of 1674 patients with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorder, learning disorder, or anxiety, and 560 matched controls. Normative models showed that deviations from population norms among patients were highly heterogeneous and frequency-dependent. Deviation spatial overlap across patients did not exceed 40% and 24% for spectral and connectivity, respectively. Considering individual deviations in patients has significantly enhanced comparative analysis, and the identification of patient-specific markers has demonstrated a correlation with clinical assessments, representing a crucial step towards attaining precision psychiatry through EEG.

Advanced noninvasive neuroimaging methods provide valuable information on the brain function, but they have obvious pros and cons in terms of temporal and spatial resolution. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) using blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) effect provides good spatial resolution in the order of millimeters, but has a poor temporal resolution in the order of seconds due to slow hemodynamic responses to neuronal activation, providing indirect information on neuronal activity. In contrast, electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) provide excellent temporal resolution in the millisecond range, but spatial information is limited to centimeter scales. Therefore, there has been a longstanding demand for noninvasive brain imaging methods capable of detecting neuronal activity at both high temporal and spatial resolution. In this talk, I will introduce a novel approach that enables Direct Imaging of Neuronal Activity (DIANA) using MRI that can dynamically image neuronal spiking activity in milliseconds precision, achieved by data acquisition scheme of rapid 2D line scan synchronized with periodically applied functional stimuli. DIANA was demonstrated through in vivo mouse brain imaging on a 9.4T animal scanner during electrical whisker-pad stimulation. DIANA with milliseconds temporal resolution had high correlations with neuronal spike activities, which could also be applied in capturing the sequential propagation of neuronal activity along the thalamocortical pathway of brain networks. In terms of the contrast mechanism, DIANA was almost unaffected by hemodynamic responses, but was subject to changes in membrane potential-associated tissue relaxation times such as T2 relaxation time. DIANA is expected to break new ground in brain science by providing an in-depth understanding of the hierarchical functional organization of the brain, including the spatiotemporal dynamics of neural networks.

Repetitive spatiotemporal patterns in resting-state brain activities have been widely observed in various species and regions, such as rat and cat visual cortices. Since they resemble the preceding brain activities during tasks, they are assumed to reflect past experiences embedded in neuronal circuits. Moreover, spatiotemporal patterns involving whole-brain activities may also reflect a process that integrates information distributed over the entire brain, such as motor and visual information. Therefore, revealing such patterns may elucidate how the information is integrated to generate consciousness. In this talk, I will introduce our proposed method to estimate repetitive spatiotemporal patterns from resting-state brain activity data and show the spatiotemporal patterns estimated from human resting-state magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG) data. Our analyses suggest that the patterns involved whole-brain propagating activities that reflected a process to integrate the information distributed over frequencies and networks. I will also introduce our current attempt to reveal signal flows and their roles in the spatiotemporal patterns using a big dataset. - Takeda et al., Estimating repetitive spatiotemporal patterns from resting-state brain activity data. NeuroImage (2016); 133:251-65. - Takeda et al., Whole-brain propagating patterns in human resting-state brain activities. NeuroImage (2021); 245:118711.

Fastball is a novel, fast, passive biomarker of cognitive function, that uses cheap, scalable electroencephalography (EEG) technology. It is sensitive to early dementia; language, education, effort and anxiety independent and can be used in any setting including patients’ homes. It can capture a range of cognitive functions including semantic memory, recognition memory, attention and visual function. We have shown that Fastball is sensitive to cognitive dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment, with data collected in patients’ homes using low-cost portable EEG. We are now preparing for significant scale-up and the validation of Fastball in primary and secondary care.

The view of human brain function has drastically shifted over the last decade, owing to the observation that the majority of brain activity is intrinsic rather than driven by external stimuli or cognitive demands. Specifically, all brain regions continuously communicate in spatiotemporally organized patterns that constitute the functional connectome, with consequences for cognition and behavior. In this talk, I will argue that another shift is underway, driven by new insights from synergistic interrogation of the functional connectome using different acquisition methods. The human functional connectome is typically investigated with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that relies on the indirect hemodynamic signal, thereby emphasizing very slow connectivity across brain regions. Conversely, more recent methodological advances demonstrate that fast connectivity within the whole-brain connectome can be studied with real-time methods such as electroencephalography (EEG). Our findings show that combining fMRI with scalp or intracranial EEG in humans, especially when recorded concurrently, paints a rich picture of neural communication across the connectome. Specifically, the connectome comprises both fast, oscillation-based connectivity observable with EEG, as well as extremely slow processes best captured by fMRI. While the fast and slow processes share an important degree of spatial organization, these processes unfold in a temporally independent manner. Our observations suggest that fMRI and EEG may be envisaged as capturing distinct aspects of functional connectivity, rather than intermodal measurements of the same phenomenon. Infraslow fluctuation-based and rapid oscillation-based connectivity of various frequency bands constitute multiple dynamic trajectories through a shared state space of discrete connectome configurations. The multitude of flexible trajectories may concurrently enable functional connectivity across multiple independent sets of distributed brain regions.

In nature, sensory inputs are often highly structured, and statistical regularities of these signals can be extracted to form expectation about future sensorimotor associations, thereby optimizing behavior. One of the fundamental questions in neuroscience concerns the neural computations that underlie these probabilistic sensorimotor processing. Through a recurrent neural network (RNN) model and human psychophysics and electroencephalography (EEG), the present study investigates circuit mechanisms for processing probabilistic structures of sensory signals to guide behavior. We first constructed and trained a biophysically constrained RNN model to perform a series of probabilistic decision-making tasks similar to paradigms designed for humans. Specifically, the training environment was probabilistic such that one stimulus was more probable than the others. We show that both humans and the RNN model successfully extract information about stimulus probability and integrate this knowledge into their decisions and task strategy in a new environment. Specifically, performance of both humans and the RNN model varied with the degree to which the stimulus probability of the new environment matched the formed expectation. In both cases, this expectation effect was more prominent when the strength of sensory evidence was low, suggesting that like humans, our RNNs placed more emphasis on prior expectation (top-down signals) when the available sensory information (bottom-up signals) was limited, thereby optimizing task performance. Finally, by dissecting the trained RNN model, we demonstrate how competitive inhibition and recurrent excitation form the basis for neural circuitry optimized to perform probabilistic information processing.

The human brain is a heavily interconnected structure giving rise to complex functions. While brain functionality is mostly revealed during wakefulness, the sleeping brain might offer another view into physiological and pathological brain connectivity. Furthermore, there is a large body of evidence supporting that sleep mediates plastic changes in brain connectivity. Although brain plasticity depends on environmental input which is provided in the waking state, disconnection during sleep might be necessary for integrating new into existing information and at the same time restoring brain efficiency. In this talk, I will present structural, molecular, and electrophysiological markers of brain connectivity and sleep-dependent restoration that we have evaluated using Magnetic Resonance Imaging and electroencephalography in a healthy population. In a second step, I will show how we translated the gained findings into two clinical populations in which alterations in brain connectivity have been described, the neuropsychiatric disorder attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and the neurologic disorder thalamic ischemic stroke.

Although electroencephalography (EEG) has been used in clinical and research studies for almost a century, recent technological advances have made the equipment and processing tools more accessible outside laboratory settings. These low-cost alternatives can achieve satisfactory results in experiments such as detecting event-related potentials and classifying cognitive states. In our research, we use low-cost single-channel EEG to classify brain activity during the presentation of images of opposite emotional valence from the OASIS database. Emotional classification has already been achieved using research-grade and commercial-grade equipment, but our approach pioneers the use of educational-grade equipment for said task. EEG data is collected with a Backyard Brains SpikerBox, a low-cost and open-source bioamplifier that can record a single-channel electric signal from a pair of electrodes placed on the scalp, and used to train machine learning classifiers.

Dr Jennifer Lawlor Title: Tracking changes in complex auditory scenes along the cortical pathway Complex acoustic environments, such as a busy street, are characterised by their everchanging dynamics. Despite their complexity, listeners can readily tease apart relevant changes from irrelevant variations. This requires continuously tracking the appropriate sensory evidence while discarding noisy acoustic variations. Despite the apparent simplicity of this perceptual phenomenon, the neural basis of the extraction of relevant information in complex continuous streams for goal-directed behavior is currently not well understood. As a minimalistic model for change detection in complex auditory environments, we designed broad-range tone clouds whose first-order statistics change at a random time. Subjects (humans or ferrets) were trained to detect these changes.They were faced with the dual-task of estimating the baseline statistics and detecting a potential change in those statistics at any moment. To characterize the extraction and encoding of relevant sensory information along the cortical hierarchy, we first recorded the brain electrical activity of human subjects engaged in this task using electroencephalography. Human performance and reaction times improved with longer pre-change exposure, consistent with improved estimation of baseline statistics. Change-locked and decision-related EEG responses were found in a centro-parietal scalp location, whose slope depended on change size, consistent with sensory evidence accumulation. To further this investigation, we performed a series of electrophysiological recordings in the primary auditory cortex (A1), secondary auditory cortex (PEG) and frontal cortex (FC) of the fully trained behaving ferret. A1 neurons exhibited strong onset responses and change-related discharges specific to neuronal tuning. PEG population showed reduced onset-related responses, but more categorical change-related modulations. Finally, a subset of FC neurons (dlPFC/premotor) presented a generalized response to all change-related events only during behavior. We show using a Generalized Linear Model (GLM) that the same subpopulation in FC encodes sensory and decision signals, suggesting that FC neurons could operate conversion of sensory evidence to perceptual decision. All together, these area-specific responses suggest a behavior-dependent mechanism of sensory extraction and generalization of task-relevant event. Aleksandar Ivanov Title: How does the auditory system adapt to different environments: A song of echoes and adaptation