Computational approaches to neuroscience research

现代神经科学研究的目的是增加我们对大脑和神经细胞内部发生的生物过程的理解。通过这样做，我们了解了大脑如何控制行为的各个方面，也许有一天我们能够解释人类最复杂方面的物理基础，比如意识。了解大脑的功能对于开发治疗神经系统疾病或损伤的方法也至关重要。为了解决这些难题，神经科学研究利用了大量的实验方法，从行为测量，通过记录单个神经细胞的电活动，到亚微观过程的建模，这些过程控制了神经细胞膜中的分子如何根据化学或电信号改变其形状。越来越多地，这些技术中的一些必须并行使用，以理解“系统”作为一个整体的功能。在我的实验室里，我的工作是解决与控制目标肢体运动有关的问题。例如，感觉神经细胞是如何发出触摸体表的信号的？然后，它们如何将这些信息传递给其他神经细胞，将其转化为控制肢体肌肉的活动模式，从而针对触摸的位置产生抓挠动作？我们拍摄这些运动，并非常精确地测量这些运动，同时记录和操纵单个神经细胞的电信号，以研究它们在控制系统中的作用。这项工作是在一种昆虫——蝗虫身上进行的，但我们发现的组织原理可以与包括人类在内的其他动物的大脑功能有关。在我们最近的工作中，我们正着手开发新技术，不仅记录和分析单个神经细胞的活动，还记录和分析共同作用的细胞群的活动。这些多电极阵列记录技术产生非常复杂的信号，需要相当的计算专业知识来分析。我们的部分工作是与信号处理领域的顶尖专家一起开发这种分析技术，这种技术也将用于分析手术期间人类患者大脑的记录。我的专长是记录神经细胞，但为了推进我们的合作，我现在需要学习一套新的技术来处理我们将要收集的新类型的数据。这个奖学金的主要目的就是为我提供这样的训练。我将参加相关技术的课程和实践培训，其中一些在我在莱斯特和德国的合作者的实验室进行。我会学习具体软件的使用方法，还会分析其底层原理。在研究期间，我将把这些新技术应用到我们的数据中，并试图回答一些关于目标肢体运动控制的挑战性问题。我还将有时间发表我们在过去几年中进行的大量工作的成果。这种密集的再培训和研究需要集中和延长一段时间。奖学金将提供这个机会，同时我的大学也承诺在同一时期免除我的其他职责。最后，我将处于一个更有利的位置，继续在新的方向上发展我们的研究，并培养年轻的研究人员和学生，他们将继续加强英国作为基础和生物医学神经科学研究的领先国家的地位。

Modern neuroscience research aims to increase our understanding of the biological processes going on inside brains and nerve cells. By doing so, we learn how brains control all aspects of behaviour, and we may one day be able to explain the physical basis for the most complex aspects of humanity such as consciousness. Understanding brain function is also crucial to the development of treatments for neurological disorders or damage. To tackle such difficult problems, neuroscience research draws on a huge range of experimental approaches, ranging from measurements of behaviour, through recordings of the electrical activity of individual nerve cells, to the modelling of sub microscopic processes that govern how molecules in nerve cell membranes change their shape in response to chemical or electrical signals. Increasingly, several of these techniques must be used in parallel to understand the functioning of 'the system' as a whole. Work in my laboratory addresses questions relating to the control of aimed limb movements. For example, how do sensory nerve cells signal a touch on the body surface? How do they then pass this information to other nerve cells that transform it into a pattern of activity that controls sets of limb muscles to produce a scratching movement aimed at the location of the touch? We film such movements and measure the movements very precisely, while recording and manipulating the electrical signalling of individual nerve cells to investigate their roles in the control system. This work is carried out in an insect, the locust, but the principles of organisation that we uncover can be related to brain function of other animals, including humans. In our most recent work we are setting out to develop new techniques to record and analyse the activity of not only single nerve cells, but groups of cells acting together. These multielectrode array recording techniques yield very complex signals that require considerable computational expertise to analyse. Part of our work, carried out with leading experts in signal processing, is to develop such analysis techniques, which will also be used for the analysis of recordings made from the brains of human patients during surgery. My expertise is in making recordings from nerve cells, but to take our collaborative work forward I now need to learn a new suite of techniques to process the new types of data that we will be gathering. The main purpose of this Fellowship is provide me with such training. I will attend courses and undertake hands-on training in the relevant techniques, some in the labs of my collaborators in Leicester and Germany. I will learn the use of specific software, but also the underlying principles of analysis. During the course of the Fellowship I will apply these new techniques to our data and attempt to answer some challenging questions about the control of aimed limb movements. I will also have the time to publish the results of a great deal of our work carried out over the last few years. This intensive re-training and research requires that a concentrated and extended period of time is devoted to it. The Fellowship will provide this opportunity, and will be matched by a commitment from my University to free me of remaining duties for the same period. In the end I will be in a much stronger position to continue to develop our research in new directions, and to train young researchers and students who will go on to strengthen the UK's position as a leading country for both basic and biomedical neuroscience research.