{"id":135995,"date":"2022-02-23T19:22:57","date_gmt":"2022-02-24T03:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/02\/new-project-creates-digital-clones-of-human-brains-to-help-treat-neurological-disorders"},"modified":"2022-02-23T19:22:57","modified_gmt":"2022-02-24T03:22:57","slug":"new-project-creates-digital-clones-of-human-brains-to-help-treat-neurological-disorders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/02\/new-project-creates-digital-clones-of-human-brains-to-help-treat-neurological-disorders","title":{"rendered":"New project creates digital clones of human brains to help treat neurological disorders"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ulwMlJlycS0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>More recently, digital twins have been the focus of a European Union-funded project that seeks to clone a patient\u2019s <em>entire brain<\/em>. Dubbed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.neurotwin.eu\/\">Neurotwin<\/a>, the research project aims to create virtual models that can be used to predict the effects of stimulation for the treatment of neurological disorders\u2014including <a href=\"https:\/\/screenshot-media.com\/politics\/mental-health\/uk-neurodevelopmental-diagnosis\/\">epilepsy<\/a> and Alzheimer\u2019s disease. When it comes to epilepsy, non-invasive stimulations (where electrical currents are painlessly delivered to the brain) have proven effective in tackling seizures. Given how drugs don\u2019t help a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.epilepsy.com\/learn\/drug-resistant-epilepsy\">third of epilepsy patients<\/a>, the technology is coveted yet needs refinement. This is where virtual clones come in.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe digital avatar is essentially a mathematical model running on a computer,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.neurotwin.eu\/consortium\">Giulio Ruffini<\/a>, coordinator of the Neurotwin project, told WIRED. Including a network of embedded \u201cneural mass models,\u201d the technology hopes to create a map of the neural connections in the brain\u2014a concept termed as the \u2018connectome\u2019. \u201cIn the case of epilepsy, some areas of the connectome could become overexcited,\u201d the outlet mentioned. \u201cIn the case of, say, stroke, the connectome might be altered.\u201d Once the digital clone has been created by the team, with about half an hour-worth of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data and ten minutes of electroencephalography (EEG) readings to capture electrical activities and realistically simulate the brain\u2019s main tissues (including the scalp, skull, cerebrospinal fluid, and grey and white matter), it can then be used to optimise stimulation of the real patient\u2019s brain.<\/p>\n<p>According to Ruffini, this is possible \u201cbecause we can run endless simulations on the computer until we find what we need. It is, in this sense, like a weather forecasting computational model.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More recently, digital twins have been the focus of a European Union-funded project that seeks to clone a patient\u2019s entire brain. Dubbed Neurotwin, the research project aims to create virtual models that can be used to predict the effects of stimulation for the treatment of neurological disorders\u2014including epilepsy and Alzheimer\u2019s disease. When it comes to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":556,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1523,2229,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-computing","category-mathematics","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/556"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135995\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}