Computational approaches to neuroscience research

现代神经科学研究旨在增加我们对大脑和神经细胞内部生物过程的理解。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的方面，如意识的物理基础。了解大脑功能对于神经系统疾病或损伤的治疗方法的开发也至关重要。为了解决这些难题，神经科学研究借鉴了大量的实验方法，从行为测量，通过记录单个神经细胞的电活动，到控制神经细胞膜中的分子如何响应化学或电信号而改变形状的亚微观过程的建模。越来越多地，这些技术必须并行使用，以了解“系统”作为一个整体的功能。在我的实验室工作解决有关的问题，有针对性的肢体运动的控制。例如，感觉神经细胞是如何发出触摸身体表面的信号的？然后，他们如何将这些信息传递给其他神经细胞，将其转化为一种活动模式，控制肢体肌肉组产生针对触摸位置的抓挠运动？我们拍摄这样的运动，并非常精确地测量运动，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。这项工作是在昆虫蝗虫中进行的，但我们发现的组织原则可能与其他动物的大脑功能有关，包括人类。在我们最近的工作中，我们正在着手开发新技术，不仅可以记录和分析单个神经细胞的活动，还可以记录和分析一起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，需要相当多的计算专业知识来分析。我们与信号处理领域的顶尖专家合作开展的部分工作是开发此类分析技术，这些技术也将用于分析手术期间人类患者大脑的记录。我的专长是从神经细胞中进行记录，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是为我提供这样的培训。我将参加相关技术的课程并进行实践培训，其中一些是在我在莱斯特和德国的合作者的实验室中进行的。我将学习特定软件的使用，还将学习分析的基本原理。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控制目标肢体运动的挑战性问题。我还将有时间公布我们在过去几年中开展的大量工作的成果。这种密集的再培训和研究需要一个集中和延长的时间是专门用于它。奖学金将提供这个机会，并将由我的大学承诺，以配合释放我剩余的职务在同一时期。最后，我将在一个更强大的位置，继续发展我们的研究在新的方向，并培养年轻的研究人员和学生谁将继续加强英国的地位，作为一个领先的国家，为基础和生物医学神经科学研究。

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.