Internship on Multi-scale and multi-modal data analysis and modeling of neural signals in epileptic patients
Dear colleagues, please share with your students and anyone who be interested. The Basque Center for Applied Mathematics (BCAM) and the BioCruces Hospital in Bilbao (Biscay, Spain) are offering a 6-month internship tailored to advanced bachelor students or Master students interested in the fascinating theory of complex networks in relation with multi-scale analysis of time series data from neural signals of epileptic patients. Candidates should apply here: http://www.bcamath.org/en/research/internships Interviews are currently open and will go on till fulfilment of the position. The internship can be used by Spanish and Basque students to fulfil their mandatory training credits. However, international candidates will also be very welcome. There is also the possibility to exploit the internship experience later into a full PhD project. Following are the details of the internship. Title. Multi-scale analysis of neuronal signals in epileptic patients Brief description of the research topic. About one epileptic patient out of four is diagnosed with intractable (drug-resistant) epilepsy, presenting severe, life-impairing seizures for which the only, currently available treatment option is surgical removal of epileptogenetic neuronal circuits. The success of this surgery however depends on our ability to exactly identify epileptogenic circuits. This task is challenged by the emerging hypothesis that epileptogenic circuits are distributed rather than localised in a single brain spot. In turn, this distributed scenario suggests that epileptic seizures present multi-scale spatial organisation in conjunction with hierarchical temporal activation of multiple neural circuits. In line with this hypothesis is the observation that the spectrum of oscillatory neural electrical activity during seizures recorded by electroencephalography (EEG) presents multiple frequency components, ranging from milli- to kilo hertz. It remains however unclear how to relate such temporal structure with the underlying spatially-organised activation of epileptogenic neural networks. The aim of this internship is to gain familiarity with development of mathematical and modelling techniques that could help the analysis of spatial and temporal correlations in epileptic neural activity. The intern will work in collaboration with Dr. Maurizio De Pittà (BCAM) to adapt current models of neuron-glial networks to reproduce epileptic seizures, and with Dr. Paolo Bonifazi (BioCruces) for the analysis of neural time series. Requirements. - Basic knowledge of graph theory and statistical data analysis, and numerical integration - Essential programming skills in MATLAB and/or Python - Basic knowledge in neuroscience is a plus - Ability to meet deadlines - Strong interest to pursue research in complex network theory Keywords: computational neuroscience, time-series analysis, network theory, epilepsy, neuron-glia interactions. Contact details: Maurizio De Pitta', mdepitta@bcamath.org Paolo Bonifazi, paolo.bonifazi@osakidetza.eus ----- Maurizio De Pitta' Research Fellow MCEN -- Group of Mathematical, Computational and Experimental Neuroscience BCAM -- Basque Center of Applied Mathematics https://sites.google.com/site/mauriziodepitta/home
participants (1)
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Maurizio De Pitta