New project to connect decades of brain research

A University of California, Riverside engineer has received a $1.6 million federal grant to improve scientists' ability to interpret brain activity and advance studies of neurological disorders such as epilepsy.

The project seeks to answer a longstanding question in neuroscience: How do patterns of brain activity change when scientists examine individual neurons versus entire networks of cells?

The researchers, led by Erfan Nozari, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, believe the brain follows different patterns at different scales. Understanding those changes could help connect ideas that have traditionally been studied separately.

Nozari received the award from the National Institutes of Health's Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience program. He is leading the project with Edward Zagha, associate UCR professor of molecular cell & systems biology, and AmirEmad Ghassami, assistant professor of mathematics and statistics at Boston University.

"In my lab, we study the brain by asking fundamental questions that are often overlooked by other researchers," Nozari said. "We think about the brain as an engineering system and ask how its external environment can impact its internal information flow at different spatial and temporal scales."

Scientists typically study brain activity in one of two ways. One approach follows signals as they change over time, while the other examines repeating patterns, or rhythms, associated with different brain states such as sleep, relaxation, or focused thinking. Together, these approaches have offered different perspectives on similar questions about how brain regions communicate.

Previous work from Nozari's laboratory suggests that as researchers move from smaller to larger scales, the brain's activity can be described by simpler models. That insight could help explain why time-based analyses are better suited to some questions, while frequency-based analyses are more useful for others.

Unifying both approaches could help researchers decide which analytical tools are best suited to particular questions about the brain, while making it easier to compare findings across different types of studies.

While this project focuses on basic science rather than a specific disease, the findings could eventually improve tools used to study conditions such as epilepsy, where understanding communication between brain regions is essential.

Nozari said his perspective as an engineer helped shape the project. "This project is an opportunity to take a fresh look at longstanding questions about how the brain works," he added.

Rather than replacing existing methods, the researchers hope to explain why each method works better under different conditions and how they complement one another. If successful, the work could help scientists choose the best tools for different questions and build on previous findings with greater confidence.

"We've learned an enormous amount about the brain using many different approaches," Nozari said.

"Our hope is to show how those discoveries fit together, like pieces of a puzzle, so we can better understand the principles that govern how the brain processes information and, eventually, translate this understanding into better treatments for neurological and psychiatric disorders."

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