The Surrey Sleep Research Centre (SSRC) and the School of Psychology are delighted to offer a highly interdisciplinary PhD project on brain stimulation during sleep as part of the University of Surrey Biosciences and Medicine PhD programme.
Impaired sleep is associated with many neurological and psychiatric disorders (1), but current highly prescribed sleep medications come with severe side effects, may cause addiction and lose effectiveness over time. Non-invasive brain stimulation offers a new approach to specifically target brain activity to improve sleep.
A recently established technique allows delivering non-invasive electrical brain stimulation to deep brain tissues. Temporal interference brain stimulation (TIBS) can bias neural activity with high spatial selectivity (2).
In this project, you will employ TIBS to stimulate thalamic brain areas to augment spindle oscillations during non-rapid eye movement sleep. You will use state-of-the-art human imaging methods (MRI and high-density EEG). In addition, you will use biophysical modelling (finite element models) to improve the specificity and effectivity of TIBS.
The project will be supervised by Dr Ullrich Bartsch (SSRC) and Dr Ines Violante (School of Psychology).
Please contact Dr Ullrich Bartsch ([Email Address Removed]) before applying.
Applicant should be highly motivated and have previous experience in neuroscience or biomedical engineering, or related fields. Some coding experience (Matlab, python, R or similar) or experience in recording EEG would be beneficial.
References:
Nicholas A Donnelly*, Ullrich Bartsch* et al. Sleep EEG in young people with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome: A cross-sectional study of slow-waves, spindles and correlations with memory and neurodevelopmental symptoms, eLife 11:e75482, 2022, * equally contributed, https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.75482
Ines R Violante, et al. Non-invasive temporal interference electrical stimulation of the human hippocampus, bioRxiv, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.09.14.507625
Principle Supervisor - Ullrich Bartsch
Ullrich Bartsch has over 10 years of experience in conducting electrophysiology experiments, specifically high-density EEG recordings. He has recently set up high-density EEG at the Surrey Sleep Research Centre and has written a custom toolbox to perform automated analysis of sleep EEG events (https://gitlab.com/ubartsch/sleepwalker).
Ullrich will be the main supervisor and provide supervision in EEG data acquisition, coding and spectral and event-based EEG data analysis.
[Email Address Removed]
Entry requirements
Open to UK and international students with the project starting in October 2023. Note that a maximum of 30% of the studentships will be offered to international students.
You will need to meet the minimum entry requirements for our PhD programme https://www.surrey.ac.uk/postgraduate/biosciences-and-medicine-phd#entry.
How to apply
Applicants are strongly encouraged to contact the relevant principal supervisor(s) to discuss the project(s) before submitting their application.
Applications should be submitted via the [https://www.surrey.ac.uk/postgraduate/biosciences-and-medicine-phd programme page (N.B. Please select the October 2023 start date when applying).
You may opt to apply for a single project or for 2 of these Faculty-funded studentship projects
When completing your application, in place of a research proposal, please provide a brief motivational document (1 page maximum) which specifies:
- the reference numbers(s) for the project or two projects you are applying for
- the project title(s) and principal supervisor name(s)
- if applying for two projects, please also indicate your order of preference for the projects
- an explanation of your motivations for wanting to study for a PhD
- an explanation of your reasons for selecting the project(s) you have chosen
Additionally, to complete a full application, you MUST also email a copy of your CV and 1-page motivational document directly to the relevant project principal supervisor of each project you apply for. Due to short turnaround times for applicant shortlisting, failure to do this may mean that your application is not considered.
Please note that online interviews for shortlisted applicants are expected to take place during the week commencing 30th January.
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