Research projects disseminated by the InterBrain Alliance
The main purpose of the InterBrain Alliance is to help the participating research groups to join their expertise in order to promote interdisciplinary research projects. Indeed, several projects have emerged.
IndiBrain projects (BrainState and ICABrain)
These projects form around collaboration between Dept. Psychology (JYU), Dept. Mathematical Information Technology (JYU), and Dept. Signal Processing (TUT) to investigate specific single trial EEG profiles associated with phonological deficits, fluent reading and dyslexia. The specific focus is on the discovery and method development for EEG pattern detection to identify coding differences from individuals and to explore their usability as intervention points. The project has two branches, one tries to improve EEG accuracy by exploring individual brain states in different experimental conditions, while the other attempts to find stable and detectable ICA components from single trials.
InterActBrain
In this project Dept. Psychology (UTA) and Dept. Signal processing (TUT) have joined forces to explore synchronization of human EEG during behavioural interaction. EEG is recorded simultaneously from two interacting individuals during a common task and computational tools (e.g. ICA, PCA and FFT) are applied to the signal in order to discover EEG markers for interaction.
AeroBrain
Intrinsic ability to utilize oxygen is related to many factors that are beneficial for physical well-being, but it might also connected to cognition. Research groups in Departments of Psychology and Biology of Physical Exercise (JYU) collaborate to find out whether rats with genetically determined disposition for better aerobic capacity are better in complex learning tasks and, if so, what are the neural mediators in this process.
Major grants obtained during the InterBrain Alliance (2010)
Effectiveness of a brief psychological intervention for mood disorders: Evidence based on psychological and brain measures (Raimo Lappalainen, 660 000 €, Academy of Finland)
The project examines the effectiveness of a brief psychological intervention based on cognitive behavioral therapy for mood disorders. In addition to traditional psychological inventory data, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to emotional visual and auditory stimuli are recorded. [more..]
Mechanisms of memory (Markku Penttonen, 508 000 €, Academy of Finland)
Neuronal oscillations are an energy efficient mechanism for neuronal communication and information processing, and thus a plausible mechanism for learning and memory. Since the functional connection between hippocampus and cortex is required to store new memories to cortex and recent studies show that this neuronal plasticity can be weakened by disrupting hippocampal ripples (200 Hz neuronal oscillatory bursts), it is vital to further explore the neuronal interplay between hippocampus and cortical structures. We will perform three experiments in freely moving rats to test specific hypothesis of memory formation. [more..]
