Schaefer lab | Single-unit recording in neurosurgery using neuropixels probes

Our group is interested in applying the techniques of systems neuroscience 1,2 to clinical contexts to improve our understanding of the human brain in health and disease. Neuropixels probes are high density CMOS based electrode arrays which have been successfully used to record neural activity in patients undergoing neurosurgery 3,4 .

We propose to establish a programme of these recordings as a basic science study in patients undergoing surgery at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery with the ultimate goal of identifying changes in the neurophysiological architecture of the neocortex that are reflective of pathology. As recordings will be limited to those patients already undergoing surgery for established indications the disease processes studied will be dependent on those recruited into the study.

For this PhD project we are seeking to recruit a clinician with a background in neurosurgery who will collaborate on the delivery of study under the supervision of the clinical investigator, William Muirhead (neurosurgery), with additional supervisory support from Mihaly Kollo (systems neuroscience), Andreas Schaefer (systems neuroscience), Tom Mrsic-Flogel (systems neuroscience) and Hani Marcus (neurosurgery).

The PhD student will work on screening and recruiting patients to the study; coordinating the delivery of intraoperative recordings; contributing to the refinement of the intraoperative recording techniques; data analysis and forming hypotheses about how the data collected could be used for clinical benefit in the future.

The PhD student’s primary focus will be on maximising the quality and number of recordings that are obtained in the study and the interpretation of this data. However, as part of the PhD thesis there will also be opportunities to address complementary questions in small animal models as well as consider the wider clinical contexts in which single-unit recording may benefit patients.

The university partner for this project is UCL.

Candidate background

We are particularly interested in receiving applications from candidates with a background in neurosurgery and an interest in neuroscience, neurophysiology and neurotechnology.

Medical relevance

This is a basic science clinical investigation and we need a clinically trained doctoral student.

References

• Ackels, T. et al. Fast odour dynamics are encoded in the olfactory system and guide behaviour. Nature 593, 558–563 (2021)
• Kollo, M. et al. CHIME : CMOS-Hosted in vivo Microelectrodes for Massively Scalable Neuronal Recordings. Front. Neurosci. 14, (2020)
• Chung, J. E. et al. High-density single-unit human cortical recordings using the Neuropixels probe. Neuron S0896-6273(22)00448–2 (2022) doi : 10.1016 / j.neuron.2022.05.007.
• Williams, S. C. et al. Neurosurgical team acceptability of brain-computer interfaces : a two-stage international cross-sectional survey. World Neurosurg. S1878-8750(22)00692–1 (2022) doi : 10.1016 / j.wneu.2022.05.062

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