Description du projet
Coordination des neuroprothèses sur la base du cycle veille-sommeil
La technologie visant à restaurer les fonctions perdues du système nerveux est susceptible d’assurer l’autonomie et d’améliorer la qualité de vie. Les dispositifs neuroprothétiques utilisent des composants électroniques pour transmettre des signaux électroniques au système nerveux et peuvent remplacer les fonctions motrices, sensorielles ou cognitives réduites dans différents troubles. Le projet MoRPHEUS, financé par l’UE, entend élaborer une nouvelle approche neuroprothétique qui surveille l’activité cérébrale et délivre une stimulation électrique selon le cycle veille-sommeil (CVS). Les chercheurs utiliseront un modèle murin pour enregistrer le schéma d’activité cérébrale du CVS et testeront la délivrance coordonnée d’une stimulation électrique comme moyen de rééducation motrice chez des animaux blessés. Les résultats ont d’importantes retombées cliniques, en particulier pour la rééducation des victimes d’accident vasculaire cérébral.
Objectif
Brain lesions such as stroke and traumatic brain injury are a major cause of adult-onset disability. Physical therapy, together with robotic aided rehabilitation, is the gold standard for promoting motor recovery. Yet, half of the affected individuals do not fully recover their daily living skills. Hope is provided by advanced neuroprosthetic devices, acting directly at the brain level to promote plasticity, but to date, they still fall short of producing long-lasting brain rewiring. The often neglected but close relationship between sleep, neural plasticity, pathogenesis, and recovery can constitute a key factor to advance treatment. Within this framework, the primary goal of this project is to devise and test a novel neuroprosthetic approach that monitors brain activity and the sleep-wake cycle (SWC) in order to deliver responsive and engineered electrical stimulation (ES) coded in time. To do this, we aim to: 1) investigate SWC architecture in animal models of brain lesion to better understand pathological modifications and to find privileged windows of neural plasticity to deliver therapeutic ES; 2) design, build, and test a closed-loop system capable of recording, processing and detecting SWC stages and electrographic events of interest (e.g. spindles), and also of delivering coordinated ES, including activity-dependent and time-coded stimulation, and; 3) evaluate the designed approach regarding its efficacy in providing long-lasting, robust, and safe motor rehabilitation to injured animals, while also obtaining a proof-of-concept in humans. Highly complementary skills from fellow and host will cooperate to carry in vivo electrophysiology experiments and technological development, while translational pilot experiments will be performed in close collaboration with partners in the medical field. Finally, secondments will provide additional training on state-of-the-art engineering of closed-loop systems and entrepreneurship in neurotechnology.
Champ scientifique
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Programme(s)
Régime de financement
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinateur
16163 Genova
Italie