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Proposer
Patricia Vargas
Title
Neurorobotics Models to Understand the Neural Mechanisms Underlying Parkinson’s Disease.
Goal
Description
This project is part of a wider project and aims to contribute to the development and understanding of a Neurorobotics model of Parkinson’s Disease (PD), the Neuro4PD project (http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/neuro4pd/). You will work with a neurorobotics model of PD currently being developed by our team with the goal of further understanding its computational properties. In particular, your work will investigate the computational capabilities of the BG-T-C loop in generating diverse control signals that can be exploited in robotics tasks. Then, you will compare neural computations in the BG-T-C loop with and without a robotic body. Overall, your work will be a further step in understanding the neural mechanisms underlying PD.
Resources
Python programming, Matlab (experience with ROS preferred), Artificial Intelligence in particular Artificial Neural Networks.
Background
Parkinson’s disease (PD) affects more than 3% of people over 65 years old, with figures set to double in the next 15 years. It is a neurodegenerative disease, whose symptoms include cognitive and motor disorders. Neurorobotics is at the intersection of robotics and neuroscience and focus on embedding neurobiological structures underlying animal behaviour in robots, thus facilitating the investigation of the mechanisms of the disease and supporting the development of techniques that can inform new PD therapies. Among several brain structures related to PD, the Basal Ganglia -Thalamus-Cortex (BG-T-C) loop is of special interest because it is a central part of action selection and complex behaviour. Despite solid previous works, it is still unclear how the BG-T-C loop process sensory information and interact with other parts of the embodied brain.
Url
Difficulty Level
Challenging
Ethical Approval
None
Number Of Students
1
Supervisor
Patricia Vargas
Keywords
Degrees
Master of Science in Robotics
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