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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R&D Impact award for our research

This month we are celebrating an interesting recognition of the last four years of our work at the BME lab. Dr. Michal Kucewicz, the founder of the lab, received an R&D impact award as one of the 34 laureates in Poland, who have the greatest impact on the economics and the society through their research and development. The award brilliantly summarizes the relatively short but fruitful history of the lab since its foundation in Poland.…

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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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BME lab contributed to the 2022 TriCity Brain Week

Last Friday, we ran a successful workshop about the power of concentration at the TriCity Brain Week event held at the University of Gdansk. Ola and Amanda from our BME lab group prepared fantastic presentations for a wide spectrum of audience, ranging from preschoolers all the way up to adults. A brief introduction into the psychology and neurobiology of vigilance, attention and concentration was followed by demonstration of our toy brain-computer interface (BCI). It worked particularly…

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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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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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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 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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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…