Past events: Carmen Vidaurre. Brain-computer interfaces and sensorimotor oscillations

What: Brain-computer interfaces and sensorimotor oscillations

Where:  Zoom room 2

Who: Carmen Vidaurre, PhD; Ramón y Cajal Fellow, Universidad Pública de Navarra, Pamplona, Navarra.

When: Friday, May 14th at 2:30 PM.

Effective estimation of synchrony between oscillatory neuronal signals is of key importance in neuroscience. Previous research on cortical processing has shown that phase synchronization is a prerequisite for effective communication between neuronal populations, providing large-scale integration and selection of perceptually and behaviorally relevant information. Large-scale synchronization 
is not restricted to the cortical level. It is also an effective way for the communication between cortex and spinal cord. In this respect, cortico-muscular coherence (CMC) provides a unique possibility to investigate in a non-invasive way the coupling between sensorimotor cortices and muscle activity. In the first part of this talk, I will introduce a new method to maximize the coherence of neural signals from different sources, that can be used to better estimate cortico-muscular-coherence.
I will also shortly talk about brain plasticity related to BCI practice. In our study, we observed rapid and spatially specific signs of brain plasticity measured with functional and structural MRI after only 1 hour of purely mental BCI training in BCI-naive participants. Two BCI paradigms were studied with neurofeedback based on (i) modulations of EEG rhythms by motor imagery (MI-BCI) or (ii) event-related potentials elicited by visually targeting flashing letters (ERP-BCI). In both cases, we found grey matter changes of the respective target brain regions. These recent results show that BCI by means of neurofeedback rapidly (within an hour) impacts on MRI measures.
This research has been collaboratively performed between the department of Neurology at MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, the Machine Learning Group of the TU-Berlin and the Dp. of Informatics, Statistics and Mathematics from the Public University of Navarre.