We found a hotspot in the brain for improving human memory

Last week our lab released a seminal paper, summarizing 4 years of our work to find a target in the human brain for new therapies to restore memory functions. Previous research localized multiple areas in the brain that showed neural activities predicting successful memory performance. None of these, however, provided a discrete location and a specific neural activity that could be therapeutically modulated to restore memory functions. Çağdaş Topçu, a PhD student in our lab, found that brain rhythms of…

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Radio Gdansk interviews Dr. Kucewicz about our brain research

If you would like to hear about our research in simple words of a relaxed conversation, then this interview is for you to listen. Dr. Kucewicz explains why we are interested in brain waves and how they can be useful for treating brain disorders. He also talked about the future and what is already possible now in terms of brain-computer interfaces or stimulation devices to treat memory and higher brain functions. Do you know what the…

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BME lab publishes unique human brain recordings

This month our BME lab published unique recordings of brain wave activities from electrodes implanted in epilepsy patients. The electrodes were recording signals from multiple contacts located in various regions of the brain as the patients were performing computer tasks for memory and cognitive functions. At the same time, an infra-red light camera was registering the size and position of the pupils in both eyes to determine gaze focus and the level of attention (synchronized with the…

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Historical epilepsy surgery in Poland

On Dec 8th, 2022 we participated in a historical neurosurgical procedure of implanting multiple special electrodes to precisely localize the source of seizures in a young 21 year-old patient. The electrodes contained arrays of both standard macro-contacts (each less than 1cm big) to record large brain wave activities and special micro-contacts (each less than 100 micrometers big) to record local brain waves and even detect electrical impulses from individual brain cells (single neurons). These were implanted…

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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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We make clinical and research impact on Polish neuroscience

None of us expected that our First Team project funded by the Foundation for Polish Science is going to make such an impact on studying and treating brain disorders in Poland. This month our application for additional funding of high-tech equipment for brain recording and stimulation was approved, following a preceding ethical approval for using it for research and clinical purposes in Poland. Initially it was planned to be used with patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease and…

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‘Naukowe Love’, i.e. sharing our passion for neuroscience across all generations

This month Dr. Kucewicz engaged in several public events dedicated to promoting neuroscience and awareness of the societal problems that our research addresses. ‘Centrum Naukowe Eksperyment’ in Gdynia invited us to present and run a workshop on their special Valentine’s Day event ‘Naukowe Love’ about the heart and the brain (btw, St. Valentine is the patron for epilepsy). Our workshop was attended by most of the participants (over 700 in total!) with almost continuous 4…

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Can post-comatose minimally conscious patients read? A new study by the member of our BME lab assesses with eye-tracking technology.

Dr. Michal Lech, postdoc in our BME lab, in his recent Scientific Reports publication with Dr. Agnieszka Kwiatkowska, Dr. Piotr Odya, and Prof. Andrzej Czyżewski from the Department of Multimedia Systems of the Gdansk University of Technology, found that the post-comatose patients with minimal consciousness tend to preserve reading comprehension skills but neglect syntax and spelling. Their results showed that most patients preserved the ability to read one- and two-syllable words and comprehended sentences but…

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We used Artificial Intelligence methods to identify brain regions engaged in memory encoding

Have you ever looked at EEG signals of the brain wave activity? Would you be able to tell from a multitude of channels the ones that record from a brain region supporting your thinking or remembering abstract ideas? Even neuroscientists with years of experience in looking at and analyzing these signals struggle and can only provide a subjective selection of channels activated in response to a given cognitive process. Moreover, every scientist would select a…

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Our latest results presented on the world’s largest neuroscience conference

Our BME lab demonstrated exciting new findings from the Ph.D. projects of Victoria Marks (Mayo Graduate School) and Cagdas Topcu (Gdansk University of Technology) at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Chicago, USA, which was attended by almost 30 000 brain scientists from all across the globe. Tory and Cagdas had a chance to discuss and share their analysis results presented as posters with other peers and experts from the field and beyond. Theo…