Research: Topics

Researchers are listed below each major research area

Last update: 1 October 2012

“Wired” project

Boyden, Kopell, Wilson, Desimone, Eichenbaum, Graybiel, Miller, Eden, Kramer, Brown

• Designing a system to collect and analyze electrical neural data from thousands of sites in the brain
• High-throughput digital data storage and analysis architectures
• Automated spike sorting methods
• Geometries of probes

Optogenetic perturbation of brain rhythms

Boyden, Han, Kopell, Desimone, Brown, Borgers, Kramer, Ritt, Eden

• Optogenetic perturbation of cognitive circuits
• Technologies for automating neural recording
• Protein delivery to neurons
• Somatosensory cortex oscillations
• Amygdala-hippocampal dynamics
• Cortical dynamics and attention using optogenetics
• Optogenetics and anesthesia effect analysis
• Gamma oscillations and cell assemblies

Neural Data Analysis

Desimone, Kramer, Eden, Eichenbaum, Whittington, Ritt, Cheng, Sarma, Kopell, Purdon, Cash, Stufflbeam, Hamalainen, Vaina

• Relationship between point processes and continuous signals
• Disambiguating statistical covariates
• Combining dynamical systems and statistical methods
• Dynamical properties of optogenetic stimulation
• Statistics of spiking in Parkinson’s Disease
• Statistical changes in sleep and anesthesia
• Data analysis and epilepsy
• Analyzing connectivity from imaging data

Origins and propagation of rhythms

Moore, Jones, Kopell, Miller, Borgers, Boyden

• Model and verification of MEG data
• Gamma rhythms in the frontal cortex
• Gamma rhythms and cell assemblies
• Origins of the local field potential
• Propagation of rhythms

Rhythms and cognition

Kopell, Jones, Moore, Whittington, Eichenbaum, Han, Miller, Wilson, Brown, Graybiel, Polley

• Thalamic alpha Model
• Alpha rhythms and attention
• Beta rhythms and selective attention
• Beta rhythms and the hippocampus
• Causal evidence supporting a role for gamma and alpha oscillations in sensory information processing
• Cholinergic modulation of attention
• Multiple gamma rhythms in the auditory cortex and implications for bottom-up processing
• Encoding rules using rhythms
• Thalamic rhythms and cognition
• Non-Traditional Mechanisms for Regulating Neocortical Dynamics: The Hemo-Neural Hypothesis

Dynamics of anesthesia and sleep

Brown, Kopell, Purdon, Wilson, Cash

• Tracking coherence
• Anteriorizarion
• Burst suppression
• Identifying general anesthesia
• Mechanisms underlying ketamine anesthesia
• Anesthetics and aging
• Fibromyalgia and Sleep
• Sleep Oscillations During REM
• Ripple-Spindle Interactions during SWS

Parkinson’s Disease

Han, Boyden, Kopell, Eden, Cheng, Jones, Ritt

• Dynamics in the basal ganglia loop
  
• Deep Brain Stimulation

Schizophrenia

Kopell, Le Beau, Whittington, Kocsis

• Aberrant interlaminar coupling
  
• A Link between NMDA synapses and pathology of schizophrenia
  
• Developmental models of schizophrenia
• Other animal models of schizophrenia

Epilepsy

Kramer, Cash, Moore, Eden, Jones, Stufflebeam, Hamalainen, Kopell, Borgers

• Human brain voltage data during seizure
• Non-invasive control of neural circuits
• The “resting network”
• A rodent model of epilepsy

Pediatric abnormalities

Jones, Hamalainen, Eden, Kramer