Prof W El-Deredy, Prof M Lambon-Ralph, Dr N Trujillo-Barreto
No more applications being accepted
Competition Funded PhD Project (European/UK Students Only)
About the Project
The reorganisation of a functional brain network, either due to slow changes in the relative contribution/wiring of brain areas (plasticity) or due to fast modulation of their causal interactions (effective connectivity), underpin spontaneous and therapy-induced changes in performance in neurological patients (e.g., post neurosurgery or after stroke), as well as the early stages of a number of developmental (e.g., dyslexia) and psychiatric (e.g., depression, psychosis), but most prominently neurodegenerative (e.g., Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s) conditions, ahead of any observed changes in behaviour or detectable structural changes. Therefore, the development of tools for the non-invasive detection, diagnosis and monitoring of brain state transitions, that allow differentiating normal from abnormal brain function, is vital if early therapeutic intervention and early rehabilitation strategies were to be successful. This project will use EEG and Dynamical Causal Modelling to titrate down the limits of detectable changes in brain connectivity induced by Transcranial Magnetic stimulation (TMS) before change in behaviour is observed. It will serve as a necessary step toward using EEG as an early diagnostic and monitoring tool in clinical neurophysiology.
Prof El-Deredy: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/research/wael.el-deredy
Prof Lambon-Ralph: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/research/matt.lambon-ralph/
Dr Trujillo-Barreto: https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/nelson-trujillobarreto(6d7f29d1-2c5f-461e-abae-6fc1878d08a9).html
Funding Notes
This project is to be funded under the MRC Doctoral Training Partnership. If you are interested in this project, please make direct contact with the Principal Supervisor to arrange to discuss the project further as soon as possible. You MUST also submit an online application form, full details on how to apply can be found on our website https://www.bmh.manchester.ac.uk/study/research/funded-programmes/mrc-dtp/.
Applications are invited from UK/EU nationals only. Applicants must have obtained, or be about to obtain, at least an upper second class honours degree (or equivalent) in a relevant subject.
References
1. Binney, RJ., & Ralph, MAL. (2015). Using a combination of fMRI and anterior temporal lobe rTMS to measure intrinsic and induced activation changes across the semantic cognition network. Neuropsychologia. 76: 170-181.
2. Jackson, RL., Ralph, MAL., & Pobric G. (2015). The Timing of Anterior Temporal Lobe Involvement in Semantic Processing. Journal of cognitive neuroscience. 27: 1388-1396.
3. Lea-Carnall CA, Montemurro MA, Trujillo-Barreto NJ, Parkes LM, El-Deredy W (2016) Cortical resonance frequencies emerge from network size and connectivity. PLoS Computational Biology.
4. Cousins J, El-Deredy W, Parkes LM, Hennies N, Lewis P, ‘Cued memory reactivation during slow-wave sleep promotes explicit knowledge of a motor sequence’. J Neuroscience, [2014].
5. Mason, L., Trujillo-Barreto, N. J., Bentall, R. P., & El-Deredy, W. (2016) Attentional bias predicts increased reward salience and risk-taking in bipolar disorder. Biological Psychiatry, 79(4):311-319.
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