Mission
The RIBS lab deals with brainfunction. The central motive is to elucidate the neuronal mechanisms underlying human brain function in health, in order to understand, diagnose and treat patients with mental disorders and with afflictions of the central and peripheral nervous system. We fully appreciate the fact that the use of todays' techniques for measuring brainfunction generates questions about what we are actually measuring and how we should think about brain functions per se. We aim to understand the relationship between electrical, metabolic, cerebrovascular and neurochemical processes of neuronal populatons on the one hand, and normal and abnormal behaviour on the other hand. To that end, we focus both on methodology and application in brain imaging research.
Technological Perspective
Various techniques are applied to questions concerning the neuronal substrate of brainfunctions, including electro-encephalography (EEG), electrocorticography (ECoG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), pharmacological MRI, diffusion tensor MRI-based fibertracking, electrocortical stimulation, subcortical stimulation, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and neuropsychology. Various departments take part in the RIBS lab, including neurosurgery, neurology, anesthesiology, radiology, ear nose and throat, medical technology and clinical physics, rehabilitation, psychonomics, psychopharmacology and biology.
Organizational perspective
The core group of the RIBS lab resides in the department of neurosurgery, headed by Nick Ramsey. The program covers 4 subjects: Brain-Computer Interface, Pharmacological MRI, functional neurosurgery and 7 Tesla imaging methods. The main goal is
1) to elucidate the neuronal substrates of cognitive brain functions and
2) translate cognitive neuroscience to clinical application.
The core of the research program is positioned in the Section of Brainfunction and Plasticity of the Rudolf Magnus Institute, which is closely linked to the clinical careline Epilepsy and Oncology, where neuroscientists work together with neurosurgeons and neurologists to develop new diagnostic and treatment solutions for patients with afflictions of the central and peripheral nervous system including epilepsy, brain tumour, neuromuscular disease and spinal cord lesion.
Neuroscience Perspective
The research consists of a core program, and various associated reserach projects. The core program is centered around cognitive control, i.e. the mechanisms underlying the regulation of information processing, with a focus on Working Memory. Working memory is regarded as consisting of brainfunctions that serve to evaluate internal and external information given a particular set of requirements, or a 'context'. The working memory system is critical to everything we do in daily life, in that we use it to make deliberate decisions about situations we are in, be it to estimate the time we need to leave the house for an appointment, or how to proceed to get something particular done at work.
Clinical Perspective
All the research is motivated by clinical syndromes associated with the brain. We often find out that to understand abnormal brainfunction we need to understand what we measure with our techniques, which requires research with healthy volunteers. Therefore, about 75% of subjects that we recruit for research, are healthy volunteers. The research focusses on afflictions of the nervous system and mental disorders, and can be divided into basic and applied cognitive neuroscience although pretty much all projects include both. Basic projects deal with neuropsychopharmacology (functions of the cannabis receptor in health and in psychopathology), chronic and unexplained pain, stroke, brain tumours (surgical function reorganisation), tinnitus, and epilepsy (network dynamics). Applied projects deal with tetraplegia and ALS (neuroprosthetics/brain-computer interface systems), epilepsy (function and seizure localisation) and tumour surgery (function localisation in grey matter and in nerve fibers).
Educational Perspective
The RIBS group organises part of the Neuroscience Masters training program (functional neuroimaging) together with the fMRI research group of the Department of Pscyhiatry (dr. Bas Neggers, dr. Matthijs Vink). We host about 10 students per year, mostly neuroscience master students (9-month projects) and medical students (1-3 month projects). In addition we give guest lectures in the Department of Social Sciences, and give courses at the University College of Utrecht.
