Project description
Analysing recovery after traumatic brain injury
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) disrupts brain function due to mechanical forces, affecting interconnected biological processes. Current methods fail to address TBI’s complexity, highlighting the need for improved data integration across disciplines. The ERC-funded NeuroVitalizer project will analyse recovery after mild to moderate TBI using a framework that incorporates electrical stimulation (ES) in in vitro models. It will examine cellular morphology, electrical activity, and protein expression, using AI-driven data fusion to uncover patterns in recovery processes. The project will explore the relationship between astrocyte activity and neuronal health, optimal ES protocols, and early biomarkers for recovery prediction, addressing TBI from multiple perspectives.
Objective
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) occurs when mechanical forces shake the brain and disrupt normal brain function, affecting biological processes like cellular, molecular, and electrical functions. These processes are highly interconnected, making it difficult to fully understand TBI recovery with traditional single-discipline methods. Current approaches often fail to address the complexity of TBI even in mild to moderate cases, creating an urgent need for new methods to overcome existing limits in data collection, integration, and interpretation across multiple subdisciplines.
In this project, I will set up a new framework for a comprehensive and systematic analysis of recovery processes post-trauma and the effect of electrical stimulation (ES) in in vitro models for mild to moderate TBI, which allows for a detailed examination in a controlled environment. Our experimental workflow will integrate insights on cellular morphology and structure from microscopy images, electrical activity, and network synchronization from multi-electrode array recordings, protein expression changes from immunostaining, and cell viability and stress markers found in the cell medium. Calcium imaging will provide insights into ionic homeostasis maintenance. An AI-driven data fusion approach will facilitate the analysis of these multimodal datasets revealing hidden patterns and relationships that traditional approaches cannot uncover.
Specifically, we want to address questions such as
• How do astrocyte protein expression and neuronal electrical activity relate to repair after TBI?
• To what extent can ES prevent neuronal death, and what are the best stimulation protocols? When should we start the treatment?
• Are there early biomarkers that can predict recovery success or delays?
This project introduces a cutting-edge method by integrating a multimodal data fusion setup and AI-based synthesis to tackle TBI recovery from multiple angles, capturing the complexity that standard approaches miss.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) ERC-2025-STG
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8010 Graz
Austria
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