STOICISM · Stochastic Communication Inside Cortical Microcolumns
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2019-09-02 → 2022-09-01
- EU contribution
- €202,681
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Stochastic Communication Inside Cortical Microcolumns
The STOICISM project aimed to model and quantify the communication inside microcortical columns by modelling the multi-scale neuronal activity from intracellular signalling, synaptic channel, and cortical microcolumns. STOICISM investigated an computational platform that models and analyses the multi-scale neuronal behaviours and long-term synaptic dynamics using information and communication theory. In addition to the scientific impact, this project explored an excellent set of tools and knowledge to widen and deepen the applicant’s expertise on computational neuroscience. This project combined the researcher’s experience, the host institution’s biophysical computational, in-vitro models and, lastly, emerging data and concepts from the neuroscience community. The developed platform will enable a further understanding of cortical microcolumns’ plasticity dynamics, and will contribute to large-scale brain projects by proposing a new method of analysing their neurological models and data. The role of astrocytes inside cortical microcolumns will also be further understood, and its impact on synaptic plasticity dynamics. This whole framework bridges the gap between resources and hypothesis testing through an extensive analysis of the long-term plasticity dynamics in neurons and astrocytes and their effects in cortical microcolumns. In this project, we used multi-scale modelling (computer science), neurological modelling (neuroscience) and information theory (communications engineering). Based on the rationale previously introduced, we seek to address the following research questions: Can the multi-scale cortical microcolumns communication model be used to uncover hidden behavior of the cortical microcolumn and explain unknown physiological behavior? How is this heterogeneous communication environment affected by dynamic plasticity variation?
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Neurodegeneration, such as Alzheimer’s disease, currently affects 15 million people in the US with a death rate of 29.5% among 65+ years old and produces a cost around 200 billion dollars per annum. These type of pathologies are caused by neuronal communication failures in multi-scales of the cortical microcolumns. Neuroscience has historically provided theories and experiments to explain the signal propagation and neurodegeneration inside cortical microcolumns, but these behaviours are far from being fully explained. The newly formed research area of molecular communications can bring light to this challenge by using information and communication theory in this scenario. A novel interdisciplinary methodology (multi-scale modelling + neurological modelling + information theory) can analyze and quantify the dynamics in the synaptic plasticity and provide further understanding about cortical microcolumns. With this approach, STOICISM project aims to i) model the multi-scale cortical microcolumn neurology; ii) model and quantify the neuronal communication; iii) investigate the long-term plasticity dynamics and control strategies. STOICISM will develop a complete in-silico model of the 2mm cortical microcolumn that will account for its multi-scale communication. The synaptic plasticity variation will be modelled as a stochastic model based on in-vitro experimentation of the neuron-astrocyte communication. This action requires the researcher to move to a world-center in computational biophysics, such as BioMediTech, where he can get appropriate training, perform biological experiments and collaborate with other top researchers while being supervised by the renowned leading academic Prof. Jari Hyttinen. STOICISM will change the way we understand the effects of neurodegeneration which will enable future non-invasive detection and drug discovery, potentially creating a longer-term impact on the ageing society.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- TAMPEREEN KORKEAKOULUSAATIO SR · TampereCoordinatorFinland
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union