Thalamo-cortical modelling

Project description

The thalamus is a body of neural cells that relays impulses to the cerebral cortex from the sensory pathways. Feedback from the cortex gives rise to thalamo-cortical loops that generate emergent brain rhythms from the interplay of single cell ionic currents and network mechanisms. This PhD will develop models of thalamo-cortical loops using recent advances in mean-field modelling developed at Nottingham. Spontaneous spatio-temporal patterning will be explored using tools from nonlinear dynamical systems theory and scientific computation. An important application of the work will be an extension of this (spontaneous) analysis to treat the system's response to external sensory drive in the form of median nerve stimulation. This has been shown to have a therapeutic effect in the treatment of Tourette's syndrome, and its understanding will pave the way for the design of improved healthcare treatments utilising wearable devices. This latter part of the project will investigate the effect of various forms of sensory stimulation on the Arnol'd tongue response structure of the thalamo-cortical mean-field model, as well as model fitting to human neuroimaging data and optimisation of median nerve stimulation protocols.

This project is in collaboration with Professor Stephen Jackson (Psychology).