Closed-loop Personalised Non-invasive Brain Stimulation for Cognitive Enhancement

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Project Description: Transcranial electric stimulation (TES) applies weak electric currents tonon-invasively stimulate the brain. While tES has shown promising potential to restore/enhance brainfunction, its clinical applications are limited due to a large inter- and intra-individual variability in thestimulation response. Current tES studies typically use same stimulation parameters for all participants inan open-loop manner where the neurostimulation parameters are fixed and do not vary with changes inthe current brain states.This project aims to improve efficacy of tES by providing individualised closed-loop stimulations, wherethe stimulation parameters (location, intensity, and timing of stimulation) will be adjusted for each userand over the time. To achieve this aim, in the largest study of its kind, using more than 40000 MRI scans,this project investigates the relationship between brain electrical-fields, demographics and head size.Subsequently, machine learning algorithms are developed to estimate personalised tES intensity andlocation using demographics and head size. To estimate the timing of stimulation, we will developadvanced algorithms capable of monitoring changes in cognitive states in real-time using relevantbehavioural and neural markers. Our findings together will build the personalised closed-loop frameworkfor tES. As a case study, we validate our framework by focusing on enhancing attention in elderly.