Supervisors  

Dr Peter Taylor (peter.taylor@ncl.ac.uk)

Dr Mark Baker (mark.baker@ncl.ac.uk)

 

Overview

Epilepsy can be a devastating disorder in which recurrent seizures can involve loss of consciousness and convulsions. For around a third of patients their seizures are not well controlled by medication treatment.

As an alternative treatment, neural stimulation is widely used in epilepsy and has been shown to be remarkably effective for some patients. However, despite the widespread use of stimulation techniques, several open questions remain. In this PhD we will explore some of these questions such as:

• For a given stimulation protocol and patient brain scan, can we predict if the stimulation will be effective in controlling            seizures?
• What is the best protocol for neural stimulation? i.e. when is the best time to stimulate, and by how much?
• Why is it that some patients respond, whilst others do not?

The student will have the opportunity to explore these research questions using cutting edge computational methods applied to real-world patient data.

Environment

The student will work in the CNNP Lab (www.cnnp-lab.com) - a highly interdisciplinary environment with computer scientists, neurobiologists, mathematicians, and clinicians. The lab is well funded with recent epilepsy funding of >£2.5m, and 10-15 current lab members working at the interface of computer science and neurology in a supportive, collaborative manner. The lab is based in the School of Computing at the Newcastle Helix site in Newcastle City Centre (www.newcastlehelix.com), with state-of-the-art facilities.

Applicant

You will have excellent programming skills in a language such as Python, Matlab, or R, and a good knowledge of data analysis & statistics (e.g. PCA, effect size estimation, significance testing). Knowledge of any of the following are desirable: biomedical image processing (EEG, MRI), feature selection & machine learning techniques, dynamical systems theory.

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