RESEARCH

VIDEOS

Unlock the Secrets of Brain Diversity

A Device
to Stop Seizures

A.RTIFICIAL I.MMORTALITY

At a time when so much of our lives are played out online, AI: ARTIFICIAL IMMORTALITY asks, what if we transferred ourselves entirely into the digital realm? Given that Artificial Intelligence is expected to surpass humankind at an unprecedented rate, it’s not surprising that scientists have developed ways for humans to merge with the machine.

Featuring a variety of experts, including Nick Bostrom, author of SUPERINTELLIGENCE; Neuroscientists Dr. Alysson Muotri and Dr. Taufik Valiante, Hiroshi Ishiguro, Director of the Robotics Lab in Kyoto, and Deepak Chopra – who has created his own A.I. clone – Ann Shin’s documentary explores the latest advancements in AI, robotics and biotech.

A.RTIFICIAL I.MMORTALITY Read & Learn More

Krembil Research Day 2023

Dr. Taufik Valiante invents computer chip designed to monitor and intercept epileptic seizures

In the News:

Read more about the Neuron to Brain Lab’s research

Publications

Please note this feed is a live RSS feed from PubMed which can be seen in full by clicking this link.

BrainForest: Neuromorphic Multiplier-Less Bit-Serial Weight-Memory-Optimized 1024-Tree Brain-State Classification Processor
16 October 2024
Personalized brain implants have the potential to revolutionize the treatment of neurological disorders and augment cognition. Medical implants that deliver therapeutic stimulation in response to detected seizures have already been deployed for the treatment of epilepsy. These devices require low-power integrated circuits for life-long operation. This constraint impedes the integration of machine-learning driven classifiers that […]
Persistent activity during working memory maintenance predicts long-term memory formation in the human hippocampus
15 October 2024
Working memory (WM) and long-term memory (LTM) are often viewed as separate cognitive systems. Little is known about how these systems interact when forming memories. We recorded single neurons in the human medial temporal lobe while patients maintained novel items in WM and completed a subsequent recognition memory test for the same items. In the […]
Theta phase precession supports memory formation and retrieval of naturalistic experience in humans
3 October 2024
Associating different aspects of experience with discrete events is critical for human memory. A potential mechanism for linking memory components is phase precession, during which neurons fire progressively earlier in time relative to theta oscillations. However, no direct link between phase precession and memory has been established. Here we recorded single-neuron activity and local field […]
Do germline genetic variants influence surgical outcomes in drug-resistant epilepsy?
21 August 2024
OBJECTIVE: We retrospectively explored patients with drug-resistant epilepsy (DRE) who previously underwent presurgical evaluation to identify correlations between surgical outcomes and pathogenic variants in epilepsy genes.
Abstract representations emerge in human hippocampal neurons during inference
14 August 2024
Humans have the remarkable cognitive capacity to rapidly adapt to changing environments. Central to this capacity is the ability to form high-level, abstract representations that take advantage of regularities in the world to support generalization¹. However, little is known about how these representations are encoded in populations of neurons, how they emerge through learning and […]
Persistent activity during working memory maintenance predicts long-term memory formation in the human hippocampus
29 July 2024
Working Memory (WM) and Long-Term Memory (LTM) are often viewed as separate cognitive systems. Little is known about how these systems interact when forming memories. We recorded single neurons in the human medial temporal lobe while patients maintained novel items in WM and a subsequent recognition memory test for the same items. In the hippocampus […]
Neural dynamics underlying minute-timescale persistent behavior in the human brain
29 July 2024
The ability to pursue long-term goals relies on a representations of task context that can both be maintained over long periods of time and switched flexibly when goals change. Little is known about the neural substrate for such minute-scale maintenance of task sets. Utilizing recordings in neurosurgical patients, we examined how groups of neurons in […]
Single-cell atlas of the human brain vasculature across development, adulthood and disease
10 July 2024
A broad range of brain pathologies critically relies on the vasculature, and cerebrovascular disease is a leading cause of death worldwide. However, the cellular and molecular architecture of the human brain vasculature remains incompletely understood¹. Here we performed single-cell RNA sequencing analysis of 606,380 freshly isolated endothelial cells, perivascular cells and other tissue-derived cells from […]
Highly local activation of inhibition at the seizure wavefront in vivo
4 May 2024
The propagation of a seizure wavefront in the cortex divides an intensely firing seizure core from a low-firing seizure penumbra. Seizure propagation is currently thought to generate strong activation of inhibition in the seizure penumbra that leads to its decreased neuronal firing. However, the direct measurement of neuronal excitability during seizures has been difficult to […]
Control of working memory by phase-amplitude coupling of human hippocampal neurons
17 April 2024
Retaining information in working memory is a demanding process that relies on cognitive control to protect memoranda-specific persistent activity from interference^(1,2). However, how cognitive control regulates working memory storage is unclear. Here we show that interactions of frontal control and hippocampal persistent activity are coordinated by theta-gamma phase-amplitude coupling (TG-PAC). We recorded single neurons in […]
Evaluating the Current State of Epilepsy Care in the Province of Ontario
1 March 2024
There are numerous challenges pertaining to epilepsy care across Ontario, including Epilepsy Monitoring Unit (EMU) bed pressures, surgical access and community supports. We sampled the current clinical, community and operational state of Ontario epilepsy centres and community epilepsy agencies post COVID-19 pandemic. A 44-item survey was distributed to all 11 district and regional adult and […]
In-silico testing of new pharmacology for restoring inhibition and human cortical function in depression
24 February 2024
Reduced inhibition by somatostatin-expressing interneurons is associated with depression. Administration of positive allosteric modulators of α5 subunit-containing GABA(A) receptor (α5-PAM) that selectively target this lost inhibition exhibit antidepressant and pro-cognitive effects in rodent models of chronic stress. However, the functional effects of α5-PAM on the human brain in vivo are unknown, and currently cannot be […]
Diversity-induced trivialization and resilience of neural dynamics
29 January 2024
Heterogeneity is omnipresent across all living systems. Diversity enriches the dynamical repertoire of these systems but remains challenging to reconcile with their manifest robustness and dynamical persistence over time, a fundamental feature called resilience. To better understand the mechanism underlying resilience in neural circuits, we considered a nonlinear network model, extracting the relationship between excitability […]
Emergence Patterns from General Anesthesia after Epilepsy Surgery: An Observational Pilot Study
28 December 2023
Objective Emergence from anesthesia starts from the limbic structures and then spreads outwards to brainstem, reticular activating systems, and then to the cortex. Epilepsy surgery often involves resection of limbic structures and hence may disrupt the pattern of emergence. The aim of this study was to explore the pattern of emergence from anesthesia following epilepsy […]
Hardware-Efficient 1D CNN for Patient-Specific Early Seizure Detection
12 December 2023
Closed-loop brain-implantable neuromodulation devices are a new treatment option for patients with refractory epilepsy. Seizure detection algorithms implemented on such devices are subject to strict power and area constraints. Deep learning methods, though very powerful, tend to have high computational complexity and thus are typically impractical for resource-constrained neuromodulation devices. In this paper, we propose […]
Abstract representations emerge in human hippocampal neurons during inference behavior
21 November 2023
Humans have the remarkable cognitive capacity to rapidly adapt to changing environments. Central to this capacity is the ability to form high-level, abstract representations that take advantage of regularities in the world to support generalization ¹ . However, little is known about how these representations are encoded in populations of neurons, how they emerge through […]
Distinctive biophysical features of human cell-types: insights from studies of neurosurgically resected brain tissue
20 October 2023
Electrophysiological characterization of live human tissue from epilepsy patients has been performed for many decades. Although initially these studies sought to understand the biophysical and synaptic changes associated with human epilepsy, recently, it has become the mainstay for exploring the distinctive biophysical and synaptic features of human cell-types. Both epochs of these human cellular electrophysiological […]
Hyperpolarization-Activated Cation Channels Shape the Spiking Frequency Preference of Human Cortical Layer 5 Pyramidal Neurons
11 August 2023
Discerning the contribution of specific ionic currents to complex neuronal dynamics is a difficult, but important, task. This challenge is exacerbated in the human setting, although the widely characterized uniqueness of the human brain compared with preclinical models necessitates the direct study of human neurons. Neuronal spiking frequency preference is of particular interest given its […]
Investigation of neurophysiologic and functional connectivity changes following glioma resection using magnetoencephalography
7 August 2023
CONCLUSION: Our findings provide a framework for future studies to examine other network changes in glioma patients. We demonstrate an intrinsic capacity for neural network regeneration in the post-operative setting. Further work should be aimed at correlating neurophysiologic changes with individual patients' clinical outcomes.
Intrinsic neural diversity quenches the dynamic volatility of neural networks
3 July 2023
Heterogeneity is the norm in biology. The brain is no different: Neuronal cell types are myriad, reflected through their cellular morphology, type, excitability, connectivity motifs, and ion channel distributions. While this biophysical diversity enriches neural systems' dynamical repertoire, it remains challenging to reconcile with the robustness and persistence of brain function over time (resilience). To […]