doi: 10.53962/mtzn-xq83
Originally published on 2022-07-14 under a CC0 Public Domain Dedication
Epilepsy is a devastating disease that affects millions of people worldwide. Modern gene typing allows us to identify the genetic background of this burdensome disease but understanding the influence of genetic differences on seizure dynamics in human cortical networks remains difficult, not least because of the ethical complexities of clinical neuroscience.
Recently, it has become possible to grow cultures of human cortical networks ex vivo and obtain the activity at single-cell resolution over extended periods of time. Here, I propose to develop the computational and theoretical tools to analyse the emerging dynamics in human cell cultures and compare them, for the first time, to the long-standing theoretical models of excitatory and inhibitory neural networks.
This collaborative work will help to reveal the differences between natural and disease dynamics and contribute to effective life-long clinical treatments.