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Neural bases of individual differences in sensorimotor plasticity
Location: Room 101 - 11/3/23, 9:15 AM - 11/3/23, 10:00 AM (Europe/Amsterdam) (45 minutes)
Neural bases of individual differences in sensorimotor plasticity
Prof. Dr. Jacinta O'Shea
Associate Professor at Wellcome/Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellow, Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity (OHBA) Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (WIN) Department of Psychiatry University of Oxford
Prof. Dr. Jacinta O'Shea
Associate Professor at Wellcome/Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellow, Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity (OHBA) Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (WIN) Department of Psychiatry University of Oxford

Associate Professor Jacinta O’Shea is a cognitive neuroscientist and and Sir Henry Dale Fellow at the University of Oxford. She leads the Translational Neurostimulation Laboratory at the Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity. Research in the group is particularly focused on non-invasive brain stimulation techniques and their potential to treat brain disorders. The research aims to understand how stimulation works, for whom, and how to make it work better. Research in the group is interdisciplinary, with team members combining cognitive manipulations with neuroimaging and computational techniques to advance research on stroke, depression and medical device development.

Neuroscience offers the tantalizing future prospect of personalized precision medicine for brain disorders. Non-invasive brain stimulation has distinctive therapeutic promise. It offers potential means to reshape brain function into adaptive states. On the road to unlock this promise, one key challenge is variability. Individuals differ – in their physiology, behaviour, and in response to stimulation. The factors that determine this variability are not understood. I will outline how we have begun to address this over the last decade in our work. I will present a causal mechanistic account of individual variation in response to a plasticity protocol with therapeutic benefits in chronic stroke. By using computational modelling we could identify structural, functional and neurochemical bases of individual differences in behaviour and in response to stimulation-induced behaviour change. Understanding the neural bases of phenotypic variation and its modifiability by intervention is an essential step on the path towards personalized brain stimulation therapies.