Computational Platform

Modern research in basic and clinical neuroscience as well as psychology is highly interdisciplinary and increasingly uses computational methods that are shared among these different disciplines. The Computational Platform (CP) provides methodological knowhow for the various partners in the consortium – for example guidance for how to efficiently apply machine learning tools to time series data recorded within the different WPs, but also in cognitive modelling as well as teaching seminars and interactive workshops.

The CP team has its main focus on the analysis of electrical brain activity recorded with intracranial electrodes (iEEG) in epilepsy patients who are undergoing pre-surgical evaluation to delineate in an individualized/personalized way their epileptogenic brain area. Machine learning algorithms will be used for the evaluation of sleep in a real-world environment (“tele-neuromedicine”) in close collaboration with the newly founded Swiss Institute for Translational and Entrepreneurial Medicine (sitem-insel).

The CP team also aims to develop computational methods to understand sleep from a cognitive point of view. Of particular interest is to model and analyze the differences in the brain states during sleep/dream, wakefulness, and virtual reality, as well as the neurological conditions for consciousness. 

A further CP subproject aims to explore and validate new techniques for the evaluation of sleep and sleep architecture by using limited physiological signals such as heart rate variability and pulse wave analysis. These techniques will then be placed at the disposal of the other Work Packages.