Publications related to Predictive Engineering the Membrane Composition of Neocortical Neurons

Subcortical correlates of consciousness with human single neuron recordings

Michael Eric Anthony Pereira, Olaf Blanke, Nathan Quentin Faivre, Fosco Bernasconi

Subcortical brain structures such as the basal ganglia or the thalamus are involved in regulating motor and cognitive behavior. However, their contribution to perceptual consciousness is still unclear, due to the inherent difficulties of recording subcorti ...

2024

White adipose tissue distribution and amount are associated with increased white matter connectivity

Jean-Philippe Thiran, Elda Fischi Gomez, Gabriel Girard, Philipp Johannes Koch, Liana Okudzhava

Obesity represents a significant public health concern and is linked to various comorbidities and cognitive impairments. Previous research indicates that elevated body mass index (BMI) is associated with structural changes in white matter (WM). However, a ...

Wiley2024

Seeking the new, learning from the unexpected: Computational models of surprise and novelty in the brain

Alireza Modirshanechi

Human babies have a natural desire to interact with new toys and objects, through which they learn how the world around them works, e.g., that glass shatters when dropped, but a rubber ball does not. When their predictions are proven incorrect, such as whe ...

EPFL2024

Computational drug development for membrane protein targets

Henning Paul-Julius Stahlberg, Pierre Vogel, Shuguang Yuan, Dongchun Ni, Babatunde Edukpe Ekundayo

The application of computational biology in drug development for membrane protein targets has experienced a boost from recent developments in deep learning-driven structure prediction, increased speed and resolution of structure elucidation, machine learni ...

2024

Single-cell epigenomic reconstruction of developmental trajectories from pluripotency in human neural organoid systems

Fides Zenk

Cell fate progression of pluripotent progenitors is strictly regulated, resulting in high human cell diversity. Epigenetic modifications also orchestrate cell fate restriction. Unveiling the epigenetic mechanisms underlying human cell diversity has been di ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Integrated Wireless Power, Data Communication, and Thermal Sensing System for Autonomous Multisite Brain Implants

Implanted medical devices (IMDs) have been widely developed to support the monitoring and recording of biological data inside the body or brain. Wirelessly powered IMDs, a subset of implantable electronics, have been proposed to eliminate the limitations r ...

EPFL2024

Task-driven neural network models predict neural dynamics of proprioception: Neural network model weights

Axel Bisi, Alberto Silvio Chiappa, Alexander Mathis, Alessandro Marin Vargas

Proprioception tells the brain the state of the body based on distributed sensors in the body. However, the principles that govern proprioceptive processing from those distributed sensors are poorly understood. Here, we employ a task-driven neural network ...

Zenodo2024

Parental status and markers of brain and cellular age: A 3D convolutional network and classification study

Donal Patrick Hill

Recent research shows prominent effects of pregnancy and the parenthood transition on structural brain characteristics in humans. Here, we present a comprehensive study of how parental status and number of children born/fathered links to markers of brain a ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2024

The interplay between white adipose tissue, adipokines, and structural gray matter changes

Jean-Philippe Thiran, Elda Fischi Gomez, Gabriel Girard, Liana Okudzhava

The growing global obesity issue emphasizes the importance of understanding its health implications. Previous research has identified consistent alterations in gray matter (GM) volume in connection with obesity. Given the various implications of distinct f ...

Wiley2024

From Surfactants to 3D Printing: How Ion-Chelator Pair Interactions Affect the Mechanical Properties of Bioinspired Materials

Gaia De Angelis

The remarkable adaptability observed in marine ecosystems has often inspired researchers when developing new soft materials. The research undertaken in this thesis explores how ion chelator pair interactions influence the mechanical properties of bioinspir ...

EPFL2024

Neurobiological and metabolic basis of motivation and effort-based decision-making - A human 1H-MRS, fMRI and machine learning study

Arthur Barakat

Motivation is a multifaceted phenomenon that we explore within the framework of decision-making. Through this cognitive process, actions are directed towards specific goals by performing a trade-off between the cost and benefit of an action. The dorsomedia ...

EPFL2024

Driving and suppressing the human language network using large language models

Martin Schrimpf

Transformer models such as GPT generate human-like language and are predictive of human brain responses to language. Here, using functional-MRI-measured brain responses to 1,000 diverse sentences, we first show that a GPT-based encoding model can predict t ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Non-invasive stimulation of the human striatum disrupts reinforcement learning of motor skills

Elena Beanato, Esra Neufeld, Friedhelm Christoph Hummel, Takuya Morishita, Maximilian Jonas Wessel, Traian Popa, Pierre Theopistos Vassiliadis, Julie Duqué, Fabienne Windel

Reinforcement feedback can improve motor learning, but the underlying brain mechanisms remain underexplored. In particular, the causal contribution of specific patterns of oscillatory activity within the human striatum is unknown. To address this question, ...

Nature Portfolio2024

An immersive virtual reality tool for assessing left and right unilateral spatial neglect

Olaf Blanke, Andrea Serino, Roberta Ronchi

The reported rate of the occurrence of unilateral spatial neglect (USN) is highly variable likely due to the lack of validity and low sensitivity of classical tools used to assess it. Virtual reality (VR) assessments try to overcome these limitations by pr ...

Wiley2024

Advancements in Nanomechanical Characterization and Biomolecular Imaging with Atomic force Microscopy

Veronika Cencen

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a widely used imaging tool for obtaining a variety of information for a range of samples. Although it was initially intended to serve as a method of observing very flat solid surfaces, its use expanded into several other fi ...

EPFL2024

Thalamic contributions to psychosis susceptibility: Evidence from co-activation patterns accounting for intra-seed spatial variability (μCAPs)

Dimitri Nestor Alice Van De Ville, Thomas William Arthur Bolton, Nada Kojovic, Farnaz Delavari

The temporal variability of the thalamus in functional networks may provide valuable insights into the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. To address the complexity of the role of the thalamic nuclei in psychosis, we introduced micro-co-activation patterns ( ...

Wiley2024

Large Libraries of Structurally Diverse Macrocycles Suitable for Membrane Permeation

Christian Heinis, Alessandro Angelini, Mischa Schüttel, Ganesh Kumar Mothukuri, Manuel Leonardo Merz, Zsolt Bognár, Xinjian Ji, Edward Jeffrey Will, Alexander Lund Nielsen, Anne Sofie Luise Zarda

Macrocycles offer an attractive format for drug development due to their good binding properties and potential to cross cell membranes. To efficiently identify macrocyclic ligands for new targets, methods for the synthesis and screening of large combinator ...

Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH2024

Multimodal transcriptomic atlases of mouse spinal cord injury

Matthieu Pierre Gautier

A spinal cord injury (SCI) triggers a cascade of molecular and cellular responses involving inflammatory cell infiltration and cytokine release, apoptosis, demyelination, excitotoxicity, ischemia, and the formation of a fibrotic scar surrounded by an astro ...

EPFL2024

Membrane specificity of the human cholesterol transfer protein STARD4

Charlotte Julie Caroline Gehin

STARD4 regulates cholesterol homeostasis by transferring cholesterol between the plasma membrane and endoplasmic reticulum. The STARD4 structure features a helix-grip fold surrounding a large hydrophobic cavity holding the sterol. Its access is controlled ...

Academic Press Ltd- Elsevier Science Ltd2024

Non-invasive neuromodulation of the right temporoparietal junction using theta-burst stimulation in functional neurological disorder

Serafeim Loukas

Background Disrupted sense of agency (SoA)-the sense of being the agent of one's own actions-has been demonstrated in patients with functional neurological disorder (FND), and a key area of the corresponding neuronal network is the right temporoparietal ju ...

Bmj Publishing Group2024