Detecting brain waves

In this thesis, the student will investigate how structured activity, such as propagating wave patterns in neural circuits, can be detected from EEG brain data as proposed in [1]. By drawing an analogy with other complex physical systems, such as turbulent fluids, where coherent structures like vortices emerge from irregular molecular behavior, this work aims to develop new methods for identifying and analyzing wave patterns in neural activity. The student will adapt techniques used to detect coherent structures in fluid turbulence to the study of large-scale neural recordings, with the goal of reproducing reliable analytical and computational tools for detecting a diverse range of propagating wave patterns. These methods will be employed to perform comprehensive analyses of the spatiotemporal properties of neural population activity recorded using different modalities. [1] Townsend RG, Gong P (2018) Detection and analysis of spatiotemporal patterns in brain activity. PLoS Comput Biol 14(12): e1006643. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006643