On the eve of Science Day, the Idea Research Centre announced the list of the winners who would receive grants to open positions for postgraduates and doctoral students to do research in neuroscience. Professor of the Department of Open Systems Physics Aleksei Pavlov and Professor of the Department of System Analysis and Automatic Control Ilya Sysoyev became the owners of this grant within the Brain competition programme.

The Idea Centre for Advanced Interdisciplinary Research is a non-profit organisation which budget is formed by voluntary donations. The main objective of the postgraduate competition is to help young people build a successful career in neuroscience in Russia as well as to financially and organizationally support promising, breakthrough high-risk research in neuroscience using flexible funding tools.

Aleksei Pavlov presented the project titled the New Approaches to Automatic Processing and Analysis of Brain Signals. Among the important tasks of neuroscience is the development of appropriate research methods.

‘Therefore, within the framework of this project, it is planned to develop special tools for analysing experimental data aimed at improving the quality of processing signals from the electrical activity of the brain for various neurophysiological applications. It is expected that we will implement new ideas related to original approaches in this area,’ Aleksei Pavlov emphasised.

The study of brain dynamics is an interdisciplinary scientific direction, where in order to obtain results that have practical application for the society it is necessary to combine the efforts of specialists in physics, mathematics, neurophysiology, psychology, and other sciences. For this reason, the research within Professor Pavlov’s project involves cooperation with various scientific groups, both Russian and foreign.

Professor Ilya Sysoev submitted the research project titled the Construction of Radiophysical Models of Neurons with Various Non-Linear Functions. Its goal is to form radiophysical models of neurons. At the moment, there are already several such models made at different times and by various scientists in Russia and abroad, but they are quite complicated for mass usage and the creation of neural networks: many components and complex installation are required.

The purpose of his projects is to simplify such radio physical generators as much as possible by reducing the number of complex elements, for example, analogue multipliers. If this can be done, then it will be possible to collect mesoscale models of individual brain subsystems from hundreds of neurons, which will make it possible to model connections not only between brain regions but also within each region.

‘The project presented for the competition is to some extent of an auxiliary nature: we are trying to make “bricks”, from which we will be able to build more complex schemes later,’ Ilya Sysoyev said.

These schemes may have several goals: 1) testing the methods of signal processing that are now actively used in brain research; 2) the verification of various physiology hypotheses about the role of brain individual subsystems in the formation of the norm (sleep, memory) and pathology; 3) the development and testing of indirect measurement methods by reconstructing the model; 4) the construction of neuroprostheses.

‘We expect the results, on the one hand, to be modest: we hope that based on the existing models we will be able to assemble new, simpler but reproducing the main modes of behaviour of the neuron, on the other hand, significant: using such models, we want to quantitatively increase the size of available brain models in the radiophysical experiment’, Ilya Sysoyev shared his expectations from the project.

The grant of the Idea Research Center will enable leading researchers to attract a promising student who is able to show high-level scientific results and provide candidates for postgraduate courses or job seekers with competitive working conditions. After winning the competition, researchers have one calendar year to find such a postgraduate or doctoral student.

The amount of the grant is 80 thousand rubles, accrued monthly to a postgraduate student/doctoral student during the academic year from the date of the agreement signing. Then the grant payment is extended for the next year based on the results of the organising committee which will assess the project report (the extension is provided for no more than four years in total).

The result is the implementation of research in neurosciences by a postgraduate/doctoral student headed by a leading scientist – the winner of the competition.

To remind, last year the grant of the Idea Research Centre was won by Professor of the Department of Human and Animal Physiology, SSU, Jürgen Gustaf Kurths. The scientist submitted the study titled the Sleep as a New Biomarker and a Promising Therapeutic Target to Treat Cerebrovascular Diseases: Alzheimer's Disease and Blood-Brain Barrier.