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Publication

Studying neuronal circuits during seizure generation

Book - Dissertation

Epilepsy is a common disorder affecting 50 million people globally and is caused by an imbalance of synchronous activity in the brain, characterized by recurrent convulsions or seizures and hyperactive brain activity. Currently, there are several treatments for epileptic seizures and also drugs to abort an active seizure, but as the exact neurophysiological mechanisms underlying epilepsy are still not fully understood, only a fraction of epilepsy patients can be treated and early prediction or prevention of seizures is still technically challenging. The aim of my PhD project is to characterize and understand the dynamical behavior of brain circuits during the epileptogenesis by combining the state of the art brain activity imaging techniques with applied mathematical tools, in a small vertebrate, the zebrafish. My proposed project will consist of an experimental part where large sets of neural data will be collected with high spatial and temporal resolution from the brains of living zebrafish that displays epilepsy. Later I will develop and use applied mathematical tools for analyzing complex neural data and to build a mathematical model of brain networks undergoing epileptogenesis. The final goal my project is to use all the above information from neural data and theoretical modeling to understand neural mechanisms underlying epileptogenesis, which will allow me to predict epileptic seizures and silence them before they occur in the brain. I expect that the results of my PhD project will inspire novel approaches in diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy in humans. We hope that my PhD project will provide a high-throughput environment to test and identify novel drugs or technologies in collaboration with industrial partners.
Publication year:2020
Accessibility:Closed