CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Cerebrovascular ischemia is an interruption or decrease in blood supply to the brain that reducesthe flow of oxygen and nutrients needed to maintain normal cell function. Neuronal cell death in aparticular region changes the receptive fields of the neurons surrounding the damaged tissue.Healthy neurons surrounding the injury experience a disinhibition of their receptive fields andexpand into the injury. This expansion is determined by the distance from the healthy neuron tothe lesion and the extent of the damage. In this work we developed a computational andanalytical model that considers a lesion in a neuronal population and investigated the effects ofthe lesion on the surrounding receptive fields. It is found that exists an optimal value of plasticityfor which the functional recovery is maximum. At the experimental level, investigating theneuronal signals of the imagined visuomotor tasks is very important to detect possible neuronaldamage. Hence, experimental EEG data are analyzed by combining an information theoryapproach that takes into account signal causality, together with a quantification of centrality levelsfor the different nodes, to discriminate imagined and performed visuomotor tasks consideringdifferent rhythmic oscillations. It was found that the imagined cognitive processes coincide withhigh levels of centrality in the alpha frequency band for the different nodes, and that it is possibleto discriminate the performed and imagined task.