Periodic Reporting for period 3 - DISCONNECTOME (Brain connections, Stroke, Symptoms Predictions and Brain Repair)
Berichtszeitraum: 2022-09-01 bis 2024-02-29
Brain lesions do not just disable but also disconnect brain areas, which once deprived of their input or output, can no longer subserve behaviour and cognition. I have pioneered the development of imaging techniques that allow for the exploration of the relationship between brain disconnection and neuropsychological syndromes. With these tools, I aim to demonstrate that the structural organisation of the human brain's connections is the common denominator supporting functional specialisation and, when damaged, neuropsychological disorders.
Building on my expertise, I plan to (WP1) establish a comprehensive atlas of the function of white matter for the entire human brain, (WP2) fractionate the stroke population according to disconnection profiles, (WP3) predict neuropsychological symptoms based on disconnection profiles, and (WP4) characterise and manipulate the fine biology involved in the disconnection recovery.
In so doing, this project will introduce a paradigm shift in the relationship between brain structure, function, and behavioural/cognitive disorders. I will deliver a comprehensive biological model of the neurocircuitry that supports neuropsychological syndromes, which will gather the modular organisation of primary idiotypic functions with the integrative organisation of highly associative levels of functions. In the long term, this project will allow me to determine if measures of brain ‘connectivity’ can be translated into advanced standard procedures that provide personalised medicine, that focuses on rehabilitation and improves the prediction of symptom recovery while providing new targets for pharmacological treatments.
We fractionated the population of stroke patients and, by doing so, completed WP2 of the project.
WP3 aims at predicting symptoms in stroke based on their pattern of disconnections. This work has been published and made available as an interactive website for 1 year after the stroke symptom predictions based on brain disconnection is already available (http://disconnectomestudio.bcblab.com). We plan to extend the predictions to longitudinal symptoms (2week, 6 months 1 year).
The characterization and manipulation of stroke disconnection recovery are ongoing and should also lead to fundamental discoveries regarding brain mechanisms and potential new opportunities for brain repair.