Thesis Project Form

Brain lesions resulting from stroke or traumatic brain injury (TBI) pose major global health challenges, often causing severe motor impairments and difficulties in daily activities despite conventional rehabilitation efforts. Emerging neuroprosthetic devices and neurotechnologies, including neurostimulation and brain-computer interfaces, show promise as potential solutions but require further refinement for long-term effectiveness. Gaining deeper insight into post-stroke alterations in the thalamo-cortical-thalamic circuits is essential for optimizing these therapies, as this network plays a critical role in sensory processing and sensorimotor integration.

The primary object of this project is to investigate neuronal activity and connectivity in cortical and subcortical regions under control conditions and at various time points throughout the recovery phase (4 weeks) following a stroke lesion. Electrophysiological data, including local field potentials and spiking activity will be recorded through a high-density, high-channel count (512 electrodes), 7.75 mm-long SiNAPS CMOS-based probe. This approach will enable the simultaneous recording of spontaneous neuronal activity in the somatosensory cortices, hippocampus and various motor and sensory thalamic nuclei in anesthetized rats. Starting with data from the control condition, the interaction between thalamus and cortex will be analyzed and subsequently compared with post-stroke activity. The analysis will focus on (but not necessarily limited to) firing rates, latencies, spike patterns, synchronicity, and functional connectivity among these areas.

The student will:
- learn to analyze neural signals and to apply state-of-art algorithms to electrophysiological data recorded using high-density, high-count channel probes;
- improve their coding skills in Python.