CAREER: Neural Mechanisms Underlying a Neuroprosthetic Skill

职业：神经修复技能背后的神经机制

• 批准号: 2048231
• 负责人: Tanuj Gulati
• 金额: $ 62.06万
• 依托单位: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-03-01 至 2026-02-28
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2048231&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Neural; Mechanisms; Underlying; Neuroprosthetic

Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) can aid recovery from brain injuries, such as stroke. BMIs are also powerful research tools for understanding learning in healthy and injured brains. Sleep is known to play a crucial role in learning and memory, and recent work has shown that sleep is a vital factor in learning to interact with a brain-machine interface. This NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project lays the foundation for a research and education program that will discover the links between sleep-associated reorganization in healthy and stroke-injured brains that help in learning a brain-machine interface skill. It will also test whether stimulating certain phases of sleep can boost learning. An improved understanding of the science behind neuroprosthetic skill learning can lead to new insights into how stroke impacts the brain’s sleep-related learning. The results of this work could be used to help design sleep-focused rehabilitation programs and BMI systems for those suffering from stroke. Brain-machine interfaces offer a powerful technology that merges the computational power of nervous systems with that of artificial electronic systems. BMI learning lends itself to probing sensorimotor plasticity in the brain, and recent work has revealed offline processes in the motor cortex that lead to performance gains while learning a neuroprosthetic motor task. Furthermore, motor cortical stimulation and cerebellar deep nuclei stimulation have both shown promise in promoting motor recovery post-stroke. However, these stimulations have been applied during awake periods. Whether there is any coordinated offline sleep-related processing in these regions and whether such offline activity can be optimized to promote learning of a neuroprosthetic skill remains untested. The research performed under this NSF CAREER project aims to delineate the offline processes in cortico-cerebellar areas of rodents during the learning of a neuroprosthetic task, to understand the neural basis of BMI learning in these regions. The investigators will perform studies in healthy and stroke-injured rats and focus on sleep processing that contributes to learning a BMI skill. The investigators will take a systems-level approach to: (i) characterize the sleep stages and neural processing in cortico-cerebellar ensembles that help in consolidating a neuroprosthetic skill in the intact and the stroke-injured brain; and (ii) test if augmentation of neural processes during sleep in these regions can be used to enhance learning and recovery of a neuroprosthetic skill.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

脑机接口（BMI）可以帮助脑损伤（如中风）的恢复。BMI也是了解健康和受伤大脑学习的强大研究工具。众所周知，睡眠在学习和记忆中起着至关重要的作用，最近的研究表明，睡眠是学习与脑机接口互动的重要因素。这个NSF教师早期职业发展（CAREER）项目为研究和教育计划奠定了基础，该计划将发现健康和中风受伤大脑中睡眠相关重组之间的联系，有助于学习脑机接口技能。它还将测试刺激睡眠的某些阶段是否可以促进学习。对神经假体技能学习背后的科学的更好理解可以导致对中风如何影响大脑睡眠相关学习的新见解。这项工作的结果可用于帮助设计针对中风患者的睡眠康复计划和BMI系统。脑机接口提供了一种强大的技术，将神经系统的计算能力与人工电子系统的计算能力结合起来。BMI学习有助于探索大脑中的感觉运动可塑性，最近的工作揭示了运动皮层中的离线过程，这些过程在学习神经假体运动任务时导致性能提高。此外，运动皮层刺激和小脑深核刺激都显示出促进中风后运动恢复的前景。然而，这些刺激是在清醒期间施加的。在这些区域中是否存在任何协调的离线睡眠相关处理，以及这种离线活动是否可以优化以促进神经假体技能的学习，这些都尚未得到验证。在NSF CAREER项目下进行的研究旨在描绘啮齿动物在学习神经假体任务期间皮质小脑区域的离线过程，以了解这些区域BMI学习的神经基础。研究人员将在健康和中风受伤的大鼠中进行研究，并专注于有助于学习BMI技能的睡眠过程。研究人员将采取系统水平的方法：（i）描述皮质-小脑合奏中的睡眠阶段和神经处理，这有助于巩固完整和中风损伤大脑中的神经修复技能;以及（ii）测试在睡眠期间这些区域的神经过程的增强是否可用于增强神经修复技能的学习和恢复。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，认为值得支持。

项目成果

Epidural cerebellar stimulation drives widespread neural synchrony in the intact and stroke perilesional cortex.

• DOI: 10.1186/s12984-021-00881-9
• 发表时间: 2021-05-26
• 期刊: Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation
• 影响因子: 5.1
• 作者: Abbasi A;Danielsen NP;Leung J;Muhammad AKMG;Patel S;Gulati T
• 通讯作者: Gulati T

Emergent Low-Frequency Activity in Cortico-Cerebellar Networks with Motor Skill Learning.

皮质小脑网络中的突发低频活动与运动技能学习。

• DOI: 10.1523/eneuro.0011-23.2023
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: eNeuro
• 影响因子: 3.4
• 作者: Fleischer,Pierson;Abbasi,Aamir;Fealy,AndrewW;Danielsen,NathanP;Sandhu,Ramneet;Raj,PhilipR;Gulati,Tanuj
• 通讯作者: Gulati,Tanuj