Department Neuroscience
Principal investigator Laurens Bosman, Chris de Zeeuw
E-mail address l.bosman@erasmusmc.nl
Website www.neuro.nl/research/de-zeeuw
You will never walk alone
Every step you make is like a piece of art, and requires quite some effort from your brain. This is most likely not a problem for you, but for elderly people, walking and keeping balance are getting more and more difficult. Falls and resultant bone fractions cause a major loss of quality of life. Apart from normal aging, walking is also compromised in many diseases, muscular as well as neurological. To walk, your brain needs to integrate sensory input and motor output, and this is a computationally heavy task requiring the cooperation of multiple brain regions. Will you join our lab in decoding the information processing shared by multiple brain regions?
Techniques
- Machine learning and pattern recognition
- MEP only: behavioural experiments (in mice or patients)
Further reading
Jaarsma, D., et al. (2023). BioRxiv. DOI: 10.1101/2023.08.29.555378.
Swallow this one
If you would make a list of all your amazing skills, on which place would you put swallowing? Good chance that you underestimate how important this is! In many neurodegenerative diseases, problems with swallowing are life threatening. Yet, the neurobiology of swallowing is relatively unexplored. After studying multiple behaviours related to the face, understanding swallowing will be the next challenge for our lab. Will you contribute to setting this up, in patients and mouse models?
Techniques
- EMG recordings
- Acoustic recordings
- Machine learning
Further reading
Krohn, F., et al. (2023). eLife, 12, e83654. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.83654.
Spatiotemporal dynamics of the learning brain
Recently, we have identified a crucial pathway in the brain that is required to learn to make decisions based on environmental cues. For this project, we will study how different parts of the brain contribute to this pathway. This is a unique chance to understand how you learn to understand.
Techniques
- Machine learning and pattern recognition
- Fourier analysis
- MEP only: electrophysiological recordings in learning mice
Further reading
Bina, L., et al. (2021). Cell Reports, 37(11), 110116. DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2021.110116