Research partners from Gdansk, Warsaw, Wroclaw and Mayo Clinic in Rochester, USA meet in our new BME lab 20 September 2018 – Posted in: news – Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 20th, 2018 is a milestone date for the BME lab and our First Team project entitled: ‘Neurophysiological mapping and stimulation of the human brain for memory enhancement’. Strategic scientists from a wide and interdisciplinary range of expertise met at the Multimedia Systems Department, Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics of the Gdansk University of Technology to discuss initial findings, specific roles, and future directions in the project. The entire partnership network of scientists who attended comprised electrophysiologists, biomedical engineers, computer scientists and physicians from all around Poland and beyond.

Prof. Andrzej Czyzewski – the head of the Multimedia Systems Department started the meeting with a welcome note and introduction to other projects performed in the department and their relevance to our work, including the Cyber Oko technology. Our BME lab gave the first presentations about initial findings from our patient data analysis. Dr. Michal Lech – postdoctoral researcher in the lab – found evidence for modulation of the alpha and gamma band brain waves by specific stimulation parameters. Mr. Cagdas Topcu – doctoral student in the lab – quantified memory processing in the brain, suggesting more memory effect in the low frequency brain waves.

We were delighted to host Prof. Jaroslaw Slawek, who is the president of the Polish Neurology Society, representing the neurology and the neurosurgery department of the Copernicus hospital in Gdansk. We were also privileged to welcome Dr. Wojciech Fortuna and Dr. Konrad Kubicki coming all the way from the neurosurgery department of Wroclaw Medical University led by Prof. Pawel Tabakow (present via teleconference). Prof. Tabakow’s group is our new partner in brain stimulation experiments in movement disorders and potentially also in epilepsy.

There was another group from Wroclaw University of Science and Technology that joined our gathering – Dr. Monika Ratajczak and Mr. Johannes Wilhelm from the team of Dr. Mariusz Ptak, leading ‘aHead’ project funded from the ‘Lider’ grant of the National Center for Research and Development. Dr. Ptak is another potential research partner, providing expertise in state-of-the-art mechanical models of the brain that were presented on the meeting.

Expertise in dynamic modeling of the brain’s electrophysiological activity was provided by the Neuroinformatics lab of Prof. Daniel Wojcik from the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology in Warsaw. Prof. Wojcik came together with his doctoral students – Marta Kowalska and Wladek Sredniawa, who presented the work done in their lab and some preliminary findings with patient data in our project. The Nencki group will continue working on localization of the sources of electrical current during the memory tasks and brain stimulation as we collect new data.

The final presentation was given via teleconference by our partner Mayo Systems Electrophysiology Laboratory at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, USA. Prof. Gregory Worrell attended from the different time zone together with Dr. Vaclav Kremen and Ms. Victoria Marks to present results from analyzing low frequency brain waves from the patient data in our project, and their latest invention of personalized mobile device technology for seizure forecasting and prediction in epilepsy patients implanted with brain stimulator. We all engaged in an exciting discussion of how the technological tools at the Mayo Clinic lab can be combined with the cognitive tasks and experiments developed in our project.

 

We concluded this fruitful day of presentations and intellectual exchange (see the list of all presentations in the agenda below) with a reception and social time in the old town of Gdansk. Our next step in the this international collaborative project is a research placement of the BME lab team at the Mayo Clinic starting this Fall. We will collect the first data from epilepsy patients and analyze them together with our partners in Poland. At the same time, we are preparing for experiments with deep-brain stimulation during device implantation surgeries with Polish patients, as we work together with our clinical partners and the Foundation for Polish Science to bring world-class research and potential therapy to Poland. Stay tuned for more updates from the BME lab…

 

Agenda

12:00-13:00 – welcome and refreshments
13:00-13:30 – introduction and overview of the project by Dr. Michal Kucewicz
‘Brain and Mind Electrophysiology laboratory – can we enhance our memory with electricity?’
13:30-14:00 – Gdansk team chaired by Prof. Andrzej Czyzewski
‘How to stimulate the brain? Finding optimal parameters for memory enhancement’ by Dr. Michal Lech
‘Localizing neural activity of verbal short-term memory’ by Cagdas Topcu
14:00-14:30 – Warsaw team chaired by Prof. Daniel Wojcik
‘Reliable estimation of current sources from multi-electrode ECoG recordings with kernel CSD’ by Marta Kowalska & Wladek Sredniawa –
14:30-15:00 – Wroclaw team chaired by Dr. Michal Kucewicz PhD
‘Finite Element Models of the Brain and their Biomedical Applications’ by Johannes Wilhelm & Dr. Ratajczak
‘Intraoperative neuromonitoring techniques in surgical management of selected neurological and psychiatric disorders’ by Dr. Konrad Kubicki & Dr. Fortuna
(Dr. Mariusz Ptak & Prof. Pawel Tabakow will join via Skype)
15:00-15:30 – break and refreshments
15:30-16:00 – Mayo Clinic team chaired by Prof. Gregory Worrell
‘Classifying and Predicting Active Electrodes for Memory Performance’ by Victoria Marks & Krishnakant Saboo (via Skype)
‘Integrating Brain Implants with Local and Distributed Computing Devices’ by Dr. Vaclav Kremen (via Skype)
16:00-17:00 – forum discussion