Section: Application Domains

Recovery

Mental and neurological disorders are the leading cause of years lived with a disability. Treatment-resistant depression affects approximately 2% of the European population. Meanwhile, in the case of brain disorders, almost 1.5 million Europeans (15 million people worldwide) suffer a stroke event each year. Current recovery methods for brain disorders and traumatic brain injuries remain limited, preventing many from achieving full recuperation. We propose addressing the issue of brain recovery by introducing new advances from recent breakthroughs in computational medical imaging, data processing and human-machine interfaces, and demonstrating how these new concepts can be used, in particular for the treatment of stroke and major depressive disorders.

We ambition to combine advanced instrumental devices (Hybrid EEG, NIRS and MRI platforms), with new hybrid brain computer interface paradigms and new computational models to provide neurofeedback-based therapeutic and neuro-rehabilitation paradigms in some of the major mental and neurological disorders of the developmental and the aging brain.

Neurofeedback involves using a brain-computer interface that provides an individual with real-time biofeedback about his or her brain activity in the form of sensory feedback. It enables individuals to learn to better control their brain activity, which can be measured in real time using various non-invasive sensors as described above. Although EEG is currently the only modality used by clinical practitioners in that context, it lacks specificity due to its low spatial resolution. Dynamic research into fMRI-neurofeedback has held promise for treating depression, chronic pain and stroke, since it offers the prospect of real-time imagery of the activity in deep brain structures with high spatial resolution. However, the low temporal resolution and high cost of fMRI-Neurofeedback has hampered the development of many applications. We believe that the future belongs to hybrid responses that combine multimodal sensors and intend to demonstrate this in the Empenn project.