Large Scale Brain Networks in Health and Disease

Background

The integration of neuronal activity is crucial for healthy brain functions such as cognition and motor coordination, however the large-scale networks that facilitate this integration can also be compromised as a cause, or consequence, of disease. The ways in which neural activity can be coordinated across large parts of the brain in a healthy state and how this breaks down in disease are still poorly understood, and this causes a barrier to the development of new therapeutics in the case of disease. Our lack of understanding stems from inherent difficulties in interrogating and understanding complex networks with emergent properties.  

Recently there has been huge growth in theoretical, experimental and clinical studies of large-scale brain networks. Major drivers of this have been developments in the mathematical fields of graph theory and modelling in tandem with advances in experimental and clinical techniques designed to interrogate brain networks, such as multi-site in vivo recording and optogenetic perturbations. Currently theoretical, experimental and clinical endeavours often evolve distinctly, but advancing the study of multi-scale brain networks and their emergent dynamic phenomena would benefit from greater collaboration between disciplines. The formulation of an active collaborative network between theoreticians, experimental neuroscientists and clinicians would allow to share best practice and ideas related to on-going research and also to open up entirely new research endeavours. 

Project summary 

The funding established a multi-disciplinary community of individuals with shared research interests and complimentary expertise. A workshop and a focused retreat allowed the community to develop substantially, from little or no specific knowledge of the details of research individuals undertake or the possibility of direct collaboration, to defining an agenda for the community and actively drafting a collaborative grant application. The community continued collaboration after the award ended, including knowledge sharing exercises and seminars. The retreat and subsequent follow up meetings identified several opportunities to combine existing methods and data across the community and allowed the team to plan wider investigations involving additional data, with a focus upon large-scale brain networks in neurological and psychiatric disorders: eventually leading to an Accelerator Award: Large-scale Brain Networks in Neurological & Psychiatric Disorders