Research Council: Backup mandaat Jeroen Van Schependom: Leveraging neurocomputational models to develop novel insights in how neurodegeneration, lesion formation and demyelination affect normal brain functioning in multiple sclerosis.

Understanding how brain injury affects brain functioning is a vital first step in improving disease follow-up and monitoring treatment response. Especially in multiple sclerosis (MS), different types of brain injury may affect the brain’s neurophysiological functioning in counterintuitive ways. Preliminary analyses of our multimodal dataset in a large cohort of MS patients and healthy controls reveal remarkable correlations between different types of structural brain damage and neurophysiological correlates assessed during rest. In general, we see that increased neurodegeneration entails a decreased power in the upper alpha-band and an increased power in the lower alphaband, suggesting a shift towards a lower alpha peak frequency. In this project, we will assess the ability of two neurocomputational models of different complexity to explain the neurophysiological changes at the individual level. We will first further explore and refine the structure-function correlations (WP1), then we will simulate the
effect the effect of lesions, a reduced intracerebral conduction velocity, a reduced structural connectivity and a reduced interhemispheric connectivity on the brain’s dynamics and the alpha peak frequency (WP2). Finally, in WP3, we will provide personalized simulations yielding personalized estimates and novel biomarkers of disease evolution and cognitive decline in MS.