Descripción del proyecto
Modelo de comunicación neuronal
La neurociencia ha hecho enormes progresos al elucidar las interconexiones estructurales y funcionales del encéfalo, pero todavía hay mucho que desconocemos. Las microcolumnas corticales son unas unidades funcionales repetitivas que están formadas por células activas sincronizadas, de manera parecida a los procesadores en paralelo en los ordenadores. Podrían ser un sustrato neural del aprendizaje y la memoria, ya que su disfunción se ha vinculado a enfermedades relacionadas con la pérdida progresiva de la memoria y la cognición. STOICISM está aplicando principios y técnicas de la teoría de la información y la modelización matemática para crear un potente banco de pruebas «in silico» para probar las teorías de la comunicación molecular.
Objetivo
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.
Ámbito científico
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Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinador
33100 Tampere
Finlandia