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SUMMARY:BMI Thesis Prize 2023 SEMINAR // Elena Beanato: Noninvasive deep b
 rain stimulation to modulate human behavior by means of transcranial tempo
 ral interference electrical stimulation
DTSTART:20240117T121500
DTEND:20240117T131500
DTSTAMP:20260506T180722Z
UID:ee10fcf4979098e7d8cbc68a3da3a646195f3b1bd53ae5c741f31b65
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Elena Beanato\, Hummel Lab\, BMI & Neuro X\, EPFL\nAll functio
 ns we use in our everyday life depend on a complex interplay between both 
 cortical and subcortical brain areas\, communicating in between each other
 s. When a region is affected by either an accident\, aging or neurodegener
 ative diseases\, the whole network is disturbed resulting in functional im
 pairments. Hence\, it is highly important to find methods allowing to bett
 er investigate the role of each brain structure in humans\, with the goal 
 of applying this knowledge to improve current rehabilitative and therapeut
 ic solutions.\nNoninvasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques can help un
 veiling the functional role of specific brain regions in key behaviors of 
 everyday life\, such as motor and cognitive functions. However\, current N
 IBS methods show a major drawback when targeting subcortical areas\, the w
 ell-known steep depth-focality tradeoff. The higher the distance of the ta
 rget region from the scalp\, the lower the focality as well as the higher 
 the co-activation of no target structures\, due to concurrent stimulation 
 of the overlying tissues. Transcranial Temporal Interference Stimulation (
 tTIS) is a novel\nnoninvasive deep brain stimulation technique introduced 
 to overcome the depthfocality tradeoff\, able to reach deep brain structur
 es in a focal manner. This could provide new insights about the causal rol
 e of subcortical regions in humans\, which until now was limited to observ
 ations from either animals or implanted patients. First positive results w
 ere obtained in mice and phantom modeling\, but the translation to humans 
 is still missing. Therefore\, the goal of this thesis was to fill this gap
 \, by\nsuccessfully modulating deep brain regions\, leading to behavioral 
 and brain activity changes. With this purpose\, we targeted two main brain
  regions\, the striatum and the hippocampus\, known to be key players in n
 on-declarative and declarative memory respectively. Stimulation was delive
 red in a theta burst pattern\, which was previously shown to induce long-t
 ermplasticity (LTP)-like effects.\nIn the first part of the thesis\, we in
 vestigated the effects of tTIS on striatal and whole brain activity during
  rest and during a motor learning task in young healthy subjects.\nAs a ne
 xt step\, behavioral performance of the motor learning task was analysed a
 nd a first step towards clinical translation was taken by studying the imp
 act of tTIS in an older cohort compared with a young one. In a second part
  of the project\, tTIS was applied on the hippocampus in the context of tw
 o declarative memory tasks\, a spatial navigation task and a face-name ass
 ociation task\, to determine the functional role of the hippocampus and th
 e exciting opportunity to neuromodulate its function with respective behav
 ioral and brain activity effects. This work provides first evidence\nthat 
 tTIS can be used for successful neuromodulation of deep brain structures w
 ith good focality in humans. This was proven via both neuroimaging and beh
 avioral data\, opening future prospective for the translation of the techn
 ique in a rehabilitation setting.\n 
LOCATION:SV 1717 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==SV%201717 https://epfl.zoom.u
 s/j/64813563657
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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