BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:Icfo X-PUBLISHED-TTL:P1W BEGIN:VEVENT UID:69d4abdd9c6ac DTSTART:20240610T080000Z SEQUENCE:0 TRANSP:OPAQUE LOCATION:ICFO Auditorium and Online (Teams) SUMMARY:ICFO | SUMANA CHETIA CLASS:PUBLIC DESCRIPTION:Brain is a crucial organ that controls all body functions. Its health is influenced by multiple factors\, and any abnormality in them can negatively impact its smooth and seamless functioning\, causing pathologi cal conditions. So\, tools and techniques have also been developed in orde r to explore its structure and functions. Due to the complexity of the bra in\, its study comprises of a highly diverse field of research. This docto ral work is based on a particular category of this field that focuses on d evelopment and usage of neuromonitoring tools to visualize its activity an d status.\nOptical imaging is an ever growing and robust neuromonitoring m ethodology that includes a range of techniques\, which monitor brain activ ity by tracking cerebral hemodynamics\, which is known to form a close rel ationship with neural activity due to 'neurovascular coupling&rsquo\;. The primary focus of this doctoral study is to develop new multi-modal neuroi maging modalities to explore the complex activities that occur within the brain. Undoubtedly\, 'neurovascular coupling&rsquo\; is a fundamental conc ept that depicts the link relating neural activity and hemodynamics\, and this link needs to be fully understood in order to interpret on brain stat us or function during health or pathology. This coupling has always been a crucial aspect for exploration by the neuroscientists. In this doctoral s tudy\, investigation of the neurovascular coupling was carried out during a specific brain state when slow wave activity prevails in the cerebral co rtex\, which is observed during non-repetitive eye movement sleep or deep anesthesia. This cortical activity is related to vital functions of the br ain to maintain its health\, and its disruption leads to pathologies relat ed to sleep and cognition.\nIn this doctoral study\, cortical slow wave ac tivity was investigated by simultaneously monitoring neural activity and h emodynamics\, by building a platform that consists of synchronized electro physiology and optical imaging systems for experiments on rodents. Spatial and temporal assessment of neurovascular relationship was carried out dur ing both spontaneous unperturbed cortical state during slow wave activity and during externally perturbed state. \; It was observed that the neu ronal firing periods of this cortical activity lead to a hike in the cereb ral blood flow during both spontaneous and evoked states\, and this respon se was quantified in detail. In addition\, hemodynamic response function w as plotted for further understanding. Note that both electrophysiology and optical imaging were able to continuously and simultaneously monitor brai n activity at multiple cortical locations over a large region of the roden t brain\, and so\, helped in carrying out spatial comparisons.\nIn additio n to this project\, this doctoral study also involved development of a hyb rid diffuse optics-based tomographic system that can simultaneously monito r both cerebral blood flow and cerebral blood oxygenation. It can execute tomographic monitoring as both high density-speckle contrast optical tomog raphy (HD-SCOT) and high density- diffuse optical tomography (HD-DOT) syst ems in parallel. This The high density-speckle contrast optical tomography and diffuse optical tomography (HD-SCOT/DOT) device was developed to expl ore brain activity and address complex brain functions related to the neur ovascular unit during preclinical experimental studies in small animal mod els. It is a novel hybrid diffuse optics-based device\, and its developmen t during this doctoral study included all related tasks ranging from build ing the device instrumentation to developing its control system and user-d evice interface. The functionality of this device was also tested through experiments on tunable tissue-mimicking liquid phantoms and through in-viv o experiments on rodents. This device has the potential for usage in studi es focused on investigation of oxygen metabolism in the brain in future.\n  \;\nMonday June 10\,10:00 h. ICFO Auditorium and Online (Teams)\nThes is Director: Prof. Dr. Turgut Durduran DTSTAMP:20260407T070149Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR