Event:

Traumatic brain injury results in axonal injury that partially disconnects brain networks, resulting in cognitive impairment. I will discuss our work showing how these effects can be identified using structural and functional MRI. The demonstration of specific types of network dysfunction provides a target for novel treatments. Network oscillations are thought to support transient communication across the brain and play an important role in the control of behaviour. Therefore, the ability to externally modulate brain networks through transcranial brain stimulation is a promising new therapeutic direction.

Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) is a non-invasive neurostimulation technique by which alternating currents applied through the skull entrain, in a frequency-specific fashion, the neural oscillations of the underlying brain regions. I will present our early work using concurrent tACS and functional MRI to investigate the neural effects of phase dependent network modulation and discuss how this might be applied in clinical populations.