Dynamic Causal Modelling
During my Master’s degree I performed an fMRI imaging and midbrain network modelling study research project in Cervical Dystonia Patients using Dynamic Causing Modelling, computational neuroscience, and data science. This work was carried out with the department of Clinical Neural Engineering and Ageing at Trinity College Dublin
I published as part of the Dystonia Ireland research group;
“Why did the chicken cross the road? Because its superior colliculus was sufficiently inhibited, due to lack of a looming stimulus, and thus maintained prominent activation of the direct (GO) pathway of the basal ganglia. Of course, the chicken would not cross the road if it percieved a car coming (looming stimulus), in that case, the then disinhibited superior colliculus would facilitate a burst of thalamic activity, prompting the dominant activation of the indirect (NO GO) pathway of the basal ganglia. Of course, if this disinhibition does not occur, the chicken dies, while this disinhibition occurring too frequently, or constantly, is hypothesised to cause cervical dystonia (CD).”
- The opening paragraph from my thesis; “A Study of the Midbrain Network for Covert Attentional Orienting in Cervical Dystonia Patients using Dynamic Causal Modelling“.
