News

Congrats to the team on the publication “Local and distant cortical responses to single pulse intracranial stimulation in the human brain are differentially modulated by specific stimulation parameters” in Brain Stimulation! Paulk et al. examined brain responses to varying input parameters of single pulse direct electrical stimulation in the brains of individuals with intractable epilepsy undergoing intracranial brain recordings as a part of their clinically indicated care to localize seizure onset zones in the brain. Through systematic hypothesis testing of how different features of the stimulation can induce different responses, the Paulk et al. examined the input-output relationships of stimulation parameters and brain responses. The main finding was that stimulation in the white matter (which is the connections between brain regions) induced more widespread distant neural responses but stimulation at the boundary between the white matter and the grey matter (where the cell bodies of the neurons are located) in the cortex produced bigger local responses, with different effects in different brain regions. The work may lead to both a better understanding of the connectivity of the human brain as well as possibly tailor our use of stimulation in various therapies such as in deep brain stimulation.

Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brs.2022.02.017

Congratulations to Pariya Salami and the team on their recent publication entitled “Quantifying seizure termination patterns reveals limited pathways to seizure end” in the journal Neurobiology of Disease! The study involves looking at the voltage signals at the end of the seizure to examine seizure termination pattern across 710 seizures recorded from 104 patients. They found that most seizures end synchronously, and show block-like termination patterns, often terminating with burst suppression regardless of if they are focal versus generalized. Their work highlight a surprising finding in that, even though epilepsy is varied and complex with a number of causes and symptoms, there may be a limited number of ways that seizures end. This could have significant implications for therapies in interrupting or stopping seizures.

Article: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nbd.2022.105645

Congratulations to Angelique Paulk, Ziv Williams, Sydney Cash and coauthors, for their paper “Large-scale neural recordings with single neuron resolution using Neuropixels probes in human cortex”, published in Nature Neuroscience! In this technical report, they demonstrated simultaneous recording from over 200 well-isolated cortical single units in human participants using silicon Neuropixels probes, providing a path for studying human cognitive processes and their dysfunction at unprecedented spatiotemporal resolution

Article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-021-00997-0

With the recorded deidentified data made available on DRYAD: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.d2547d840

Posts in the news on the article:

https://www.simonsfoundation.org/2022/03/29/cracking-the-neural-code-in-humans/

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-03-protocols-neural-neuropixels-clinical.amp

https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/toolbox/probe-captures-neuronal-conversations-in-people/

https://www.brainpost.co/weekly-brainpost/2022/2/8/the-use-of-neuropixels-probes-in-humans

Congratulations to Eyal Kimchi, MD, PhD,  who has been selected as a grand prize winner of the MGH Springboard Studio’s first iSolve awards program along with Sydney Cash! The project seeks to develop innovative wearable EEG devices to help monitor patient mental status.

The Springboard iSolve awards are granted to innovative device, software or design projects that make health care more user-friendly, and include both financial and logistical assistance.

Congratulations to Adam Khalifa, Sydney Cash, and the lab members of Nian Sun’s lab at Northeastern University for their paper “The development of microfabricated solenoids with magnetic cores for micromagnetic neural stimulation”, published in Nature Microsystems & Nanoengineering! They developed novel micromagnetic stimulators to activate neurons. This could lead to novel and powerful neuromodulatory tools for the treatment of neuropsychiatric and neurological diseases.

Article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41378-021-00320-8

Nian Sun lab: https://web.northeastern.edu/sunlab/

Congratulations to Lou Beaulieu-Laroche, Mark Harnett lab at MIT, and Sydney Cash and the clinicians at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and MGH who made it possible to examine single cell dynamics in brain slice work to compare mammalian cells across 10 mammalian species in the Nature article “Allometric rules for mammalian cortical layer 5 neuron biophysics“! The work is incredible as it highlights the commonalities, and major differences, between cortical brain cells in humans, rodents, rabbits, and non-human primates. The work will be tremendously influential in understanding fundamental aspects of biophysical properties of neurons and how the human brain works.

Article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04072-3

Harnett Lab: https://www.markharnett.org/

Congratulations to the team and especially Dr. Jimmy Yang, now at Emory, on the publication of our paper on the microscale characterization of neurophysiological epilepsy markers in Clinical Neurophysiology. Using PEDOT:PSS microelectrodes with 50μm spatial resolution, we found high-resolution recordings can track interictal discharges and reveal cortical domains involved in microseizures. We also found high frequency oscillations detected by microelectrodes demonstrate localized clustering on the cortical surface. These results could help inform neurosurgical decisions and uncover mechanisms underlying epilepsy.

Direct electrical stimulation, particularly single pulse electrical stimulation (SPES), has been proposed as a tool to understand connectivity in the brain yet there are debates on whether it represents functional, effective, and structural connectivity.  Working with patients with epilepsy (N=11) who were undergoing intracranial recordings as a part of their clinical care for identifying seizure onset zones, in a study lead by Dr. Britni Crocker measured stimulation-induced connectivity and compared it with resting state structural, functional, and effective connectivity. We found that direct electrical stimulation networks can reflect both structural and functional types of connectivity in the human brain. Measuring these different types of connectivity can have entirely different implications for interpretation of brain function as well as understanding connectivity relative to clinical diagnoses. Article in the journal NeuroImage

How we monitor neural activity in the brain is shaped, and bounded, by decades of foundational neuroscience and engineering. In a large-scale collaborative effort spanning six hospitals, the group, lead by Angelique Paulk, used novel high-density microelectrodes to record a set of physiological events produced by the brain that have not been described before. These events could be seen across different recording systems, and species (from mice to humans) and these event waveforms change in frequency with auditory and electrical stimulation and with the application of specific medications. These unique unitary neural events on the surface of the human cortex could represent fine scale changes in activity from within the neural circuitry of the brain. In fact, we think that these events represent a window into how brain cells integrate information as well as interact with one another in the intact brain at an unprecedented temporal and spatial scale and resolution. We propose that further study of these events could have significant implications for understanding the brain as well as understanding pathologies such as tumors and epilepsy.

Congratulations to the team on a recent publication entitled “Accurate detection of spontaneous seizures using a generalized linear model with external validation” in the journal Epilepsia! link