Probing the Functional Significance of Neural Oscillations through Closed-Loop Stimulation based on Real-Time Tracking of LFPs

项目摘要 根据当前的任务需求在大脑中进行适当的信息路由对于 成功应对复杂多变的环境。这样的路由机制似乎受到了损害 精神分裂症之类的疾病。不幸的是，我们目前还不了解大脑是如何 规范信息流动。最近的一项理论表明，同步活动起着重要作用。 然而，神经科学界仍在激烈争论同步活动和精确的 皮层中的棘波计时具有功能意义，如果是这样的话，它们扮演什么角色。一个主要障碍是 回答这些问题的是缺乏合适的人工操纵大脑的实验技术 与当前正在进行的神经活动有精确时间关系的活动。这些技术允许 神经活动的实验操作在建立两者之间的因果联系方面发挥了重要作用 脑活动及其功能意义。 因此，拟议项目的目标是开发一种闭环系统刺激技术， 允许以局部场势的形式测量当前正在进行的神经活动，分析它 并且可以触发刺激设备，例如电微刺激或光遗传 以这样一种方式进行刺激，即人工注入的神经活动被锁相到当前正在进行的状态 震荡。这包括开发一种算法，可靠地跟踪一种 局部场势的优势分量以及找到该算法的适当实现 用于实时控制刺激器。将提议的技术提供给科学工作者 社区有望在理解的功能意义上取得重大突破 大脑中的同步活动和精确的尖峰计时。

Project Summary An appropriate routing of information in the brain based on the current task demands is essential for successfully dealing with a complex, changing environment. Such routing mechanisms seem to be impaired in disorders like schizophrenia. Unfortunately, we currently do not understand how the brain is able to regulate the flow of information. A recent theory suggests that synchronous activity plays an important role. However, it is still fiercely debated in the neuroscience community whether synchronous activity and precise spike timing in cortex have a functional significance and, if so, what role they play. A major obstacle to answering these questions is the lack of suitable experimental techniques for artificially manipulating brain activity with a precise timing relationship to currently ongoing neural activity. Techniques that allow the experimental manipulation of neural activity play an instrumental role in establishing a causal link between brain activity and its functional significance. The goal of the proposed project is therefore to develop a closed-loop stimulation technique that allows the measurement of currently ongoing neural activity in the form of a local field potential, analyzes it in real time, and can trigger a stimulation device like, for example, electrical microstimulation or optogenetic stimulation in such a way that artificially injected neural activity is phase-locked to currently ongoing oscillations. This includes the development of an algorithm that reliably tracks the instantaneous phase of a dominant component of the local field potential as well as finding a suitable implementation of this algorithm for controlling a stimulator in real time. Making the proposed technology available to the scientific community is expected to provide major breakthroughs in understanding the functional significance of synchronous activity and precise spike timing in the brain.