Connectionists: INRIA Postdoc on "Modelling of homeostatic synaptic plasticity in transcranial stimulation"

[Axel Hutt]

The INRIA-team MIMESIS (https://mimesis.inria.fr/) located in Strasbourg / France  
announces a Postdoc position (f/m) on

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Modelling of homeostatic synaptic plasticity in transcranial stimulation
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Research Topic:
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It is well-known that transcranial stimulation (TS) may  alleviate symptoms in neural
diseases, such as major depression, schizophrenia or multiple sclerosis. The duration
of the behavioural improvement depends on the stimulation protocol, e.g. the frequency
and duration of stimulation sessions. TS may alleviate symptoms for weeks and even months
after TS termination. However, patients may not respond at all to TS or may develop side
effects such as headache or seizures in rare cases. To improve TS and increase the number
of responding patients, it is essential to develop an efficient stimulation protocol.
Hence it is mandatory to understand better the TS effect on neural information processing.

The time-scale of improved behaviour is days and weeks. This indicates that the underlying
neural mechanism of long-term improvement is synaptic plasticity, such as long-term
potentiation or homeostatic plasticity of synapses.
The project will focus on homeostatic synaptic plasticity (HSP) in the presence of TS.
The candidate will implement HSP in a cortico-thalamic population model with Poisson
spiking neurons (Hutt et al., Neuroimage 179: 414-428 (2018)). Numerical simulation of
HSP with TS will reveal effects on neural synchronisation and the power spectrum of
population activity. A comparison to experimental EEG-data from multiple sclerosis
patients will evaluate the model.

The candidate will implement numerically the neural network under Python and will
develop a GUI to visualise spiking and population activity. The implemented code will
be published and shared in the INRIA Open Source server gitlab.  


The position:
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The Postdoctoral position is financed by the INRIA CORDI-S program and has a duration
of 16 months. We are looking for young candidates to start the position in 2020 having
finished their PhD after September 1, 2018.  
The perfect candidate has a strong expertise in neural modelling with an emphasis on
mathematical and/or  computational analysis.

Please send your application documents (CV, list of publications) or requests for more
information to Axel HUTT (email: axel.hutt at inria.fr) .





-- 
Axel Hutt
Directeur de Recherche
Equipe MIMESIS
INRIA Nancy Grand Est 
1, Place de l'Hopital
67000 Strasbourg, France
https://mimesis.inria.fr/speaker/axel-hutt/