4. Thalamo-centric causal connectivity mapping in human brain with intracranial electrical stimulation

COEX 

The brain's spatiotemporal architecture, marked by functional connectivity motifs, is key to brain health and consciousness. Emerging theories highlight the thalamus' neuromodulatory role in shaping cortical connectivity motifs (Shine et al., 2023). However, testing these theories is challenging due to the small size, deep location and functional complexity of subcortical areas, where non-invasive neuroimaging techniques face limitations. In Stanford, we pioneered multi-site stimulation and recording in the thalamus using deep intracranial electrodes for mapping thalamic-centric causal connectivity. Thalamic stimulations are shown to evoke distinct EEG profiles than cortical stimulations from a recent mice study (Claar et al., 2023). Meanwhile, we have limited knowledge from direct human thalamic measurements. Therefore, our goal is to extract meaningful neural features from stimulation evoked potentials (SEP), then infer whole-brain causal connectivity.