Our research

A brief look at the AICN group's main areas of research, including current projects.

On

Neuroimaging

Neuroimaging plays an increasingly important role in the early detection of neurodegenerative diseases at stages when treatments can be most effective.

Advanced neuroimaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET), electroencephalogram (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) help us to visualise structural, molecular and functional changes in the brain. These brain scans can improve our understanding, diagnosis and treatments of neurological and psychiatric diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, strokes and depression.

We have developed several analysis software packages for neuroimaging data, such as the Matlab RSA Toolbox.

Artificial intelligence

In recent years, AI has obtained human-level performance in many areas such as automatic face or speech recognition and has even surpassed human intelligence in situations such as playing chess. In our research, AI is used to analyse and recognise neuroimaging and clinical data.

Other classes of AI models can be seen as ‘virtual’ patients capturing their cognitive dysfunctions on computer simulations. By testing the models with neuroimaging data from actual patients, we have obtained more profound knowledge about not only what has gone wrong in patients’ brains but why they experience the symptoms such as recurrent visual hallucinations.

Ultimately, the models allow us to develop and test new drug treatments (in-silico) before they are trialled in humans, speeding up drug development.