Theta waves reveal how brain connections and memory develops in growing children

In the new issue of a prestigious journal Current Biology, Dr. Michal Kucewicz and our collaborator Dr. Jan Kaminski offer a commentary on the latest finding about the role of theta waves in the development of brain connections and our abilities to remember life events. The study was done in children and adolescents implanted with intracranial electrodes like the ones that we use for our research for treatment of drug-resistant epilepsy. The theta waves, which are approximately 3 to…

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New discovery – brain waves that coordinate formation of human memories

We are delighted to share with you about the recent publication of our research findings, which appeared this month in the journal NeuroImage. It is a result of almost 4 years of our work on mapping the brain waves generated in our brain as memories for words are formed. Tory Marks, a PhD student of biomedical engineering at Mayo Clinic, worked together with other members of our BME lab on a large dataset of over 150…

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BME lab receives new international funding to continue our research

We are delighted to share the results of the last competition for international research proposals under the Opus LAP (lead Agency Procedure) of the National Science Centre (Narodowe Centrum Nauki). Our proposal entitled: ‘Recording and modulation of high frequency neurophysiological activities underlying encoding and recalling memories’ was ranked 4th and received financial support for three years of collaborative research together with the Medical University of Wroclaw and St. Anne’s University Hospital in Brno (Czech Republic). This…

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BME lab talks by prof. Milan Brazdil and prof. Greg Worrell

We are delighted to welcome everyone interested in our research to two outstanding talks to be given by world-class neuroscience experts. Milan Brazdil, MD PhD, from St. Anne’s University Hospital in Brno, Czech Republic, and Prof. Gregory Worrell MD PhD, from Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN, USA, are visiting professors in our BME lab of the BioTechMed Center, funded from the Aurum grant – Supporting International Research Team Building, as part of the Research University program (IDUB) at the Gdansk…

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BME lab research promotes clinical neuroscience in television

In the last two months we were able to reach more people than we did from the beginning of the lab’s existence. This major break-through in communicating and explaining our research to the general public was made possible thanks to a video material and a studio interview in a mainstream television show and thanks to a new documentary movie about our studies with Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) for treating movement disorders. The first appearance was…

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HOW DIRECT BRAIN STIMULATION AFFECTS LOW (THETA) AND FAST (GAMMA) NEURAL ACTIVITIES? NEW RESEARCH ARTICLE FROM OUR BME LAB

What happens in the brain when it is stimulated with electric current? Can we see a link between the human brain behavior during stimulation and during enhanced memory performance? In our latest article which will be published in the open-access journal IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering we addressed these questions using brain recordings from epilepsy patients stimulated with electric current during quiet wakefulness. In a fraction of electrode sites in the brain (1.4% on average),…

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Making brain research popular…

This month was marked by multiple media appearances, including local and national radio and television. Our news release for the last month (see February 2021) about the first study of memory processing during a Deep Brain Stimulation surgery in Poland sparked a substantial amount of public interest. A short highlight material was broadcasted in the main issue of Teleexpress, together with a longer report in the regional Panorama. Dr. Kucewicz also gave a more comprehensive interview about this…

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First intra-operative recordings in Poland

We are delighted to share our next breakthrough with advancing clinical neuroscience research in Poland. This month we have recorded for the first time pupil responses to electrical stimulation in the deep brain structures called the basal ganglia. The recordings were part of a standard therapy for Parkinson’s disease and movement disorders called the Deep Brain Stimulation. In this therapy, electrical stimulation is delivered through special electrodes implanted in the brain of an awake patient…

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The new year of breakthroughs and harvest for the neuroscience in Poland

The beginning of 2021 was marked by a rapid acceleration of our endeavours to pioneer intracranial brain recordings and stimulation in Poland. Together with our project partners at the Wroclaw Medical University we implemented recently purchased, state-of-the-art system called ‘Atlas’ (by Neuralynx Inc.) for clinical and research electrophysiological studies in the human brain. Two entire days in Wroclaw were dedicated to assemble and present the system to a team of experts at the university hospital. The…

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Invited presentation on the national “Zdrowie Polakow” congress

Dr. Kucewicz from our laboratory was invited to prepare a video talk about our work for the largest health conference in Poland. In the talk he described the latest methods that were developed in our group to analyze electrophysiological signals from the human brain. One of them employs an Artificial Intelligence (AI) approach to automatically select electrodes that record from brain regions that engage in memory functions without a need for expert review and manual selection. This approach also…