Spontaneous and perturbation-based electroencephalographic markers of brain health
[eng] INTRODUCTION: Brain health is the optimal state of brain functioning that allows the individual to reach their maximum potential throughout life, regardless of the presence or absence of diseases. In order to promote and preserve brain health in the face of disease, it is essential to discover...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis doctoral |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2024 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad de Barcelona |
| Repositorio: | Dipòsit Digital de la UB |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/214461 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/2445/214461 http://hdl.handle.net/10803/691702 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Estimulació del cervell Electroencefalografia Brain stimulation Electroencephalography |
| Sumario: | [eng] INTRODUCTION: Brain health is the optimal state of brain functioning that allows the individual to reach their maximum potential throughout life, regardless of the presence or absence of diseases. In order to promote and preserve brain health in the face of disease, it is essential to discover its brain determinants. Some of the main challenges to brain health are mental disorders and neurodegenerative diseases, the most prevalent of which are mood disorders, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer's disease. From a pathophysiological point of view, these diseases share dysfunctions in synaptic transmission, rooted in inhibitory and excitatory processes, which could be detectable by electroencephalography and potentially modifiable by non-invasive brain stimulation techniques. Therefore, in this thesis we have investigated candidate biomarkers of brain health that could be neurophysiologically relevant in the context of common diseases that challenge it, and, more importantly, that are potentially modifiable. HYPOTHESIS: The general hypotheses are: 1) candidate biomarkers of brain health are detectable by non-invasive and potentially scalable methods, and 2) reveal relevant mechanisms for diseases that present dysfunctions in synaptic transmission, rooted in excitatory and inhibitory processes. The specific hypotheses for each of the three studies in this thesis are: 1) A "toy model" of brain resilience can be constructed using a controlled brain disturbance to simulate the stressor and assess brain reactivity as an indicator of the organism's response. This integrated model will identify a distinctive signature of brain resilience in the face of the anticipated impact of psychosocial stressors associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. 2) Inhibitory abnormalities of patients with schizophrenia during a visual working memory task are detectable and can be deepened using an interpretable machine learning model, in order to differentiate patients from controls using only electroencephalography (EEG) data. 3) higher cortical excitability correlates with higher concentrations of phosphorylated tau secreted in plasma, while no association was observed with the concentration of passive secretion 'neurofilament light'. OBJECTIVES: The main objective of this thesis is to investigate candidate biomarkers of brain health that are potentially translational and modifiable in the context of some of its most prevalent challenges. The specific objectives of each of the three studies are: 1) to build a "toy model" of brain resilience and use it in the context of psychosocial stressors associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. 2) implement an interpretable machine learning algorithm that can differentiate patients from controls based solely on EEG data, while revealing the specific neurophysiological mechanisms that led to the classification. 3) to establish the relationship between cortical excitability and proteins involved in the pathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease using non-invasive methods. |
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