I am Julia Varotto. I'm a Italian neuroscientist, and currently I'm working in the Laboratory
for Clinical Neuroscience in the Center for Biomedical Technology of the UPM of Madrid.
My main topic of research has been in the field of epilepsy.
More or less 30% of patients with epilepsy that can`t be cured with medication,
that are drug resistant, and for this patient at the moment, the only therapeutic strategy that we
have is surgical intervention. For most of this patient,
we need invasive procedure to record data to acquire electrophysiological data
By analyzing this data, we can localize the epileptogenic zone,
which is the main problem that we have today,
this takes long time, is very expensive, and this a strong subjective procedure.
My most recent project was aimed at developing advanced novel method to create an automatic
tool able to detect the epileptogenic zone from very short fragment of data. The very first few
minutes of recording. To do this we work with novel methods that belongs to two big families:
One is complex network analysis and the other is advanced machine learning and AI techniques.
Complex network, why? Because now is well known that epilepsy is a network disease and not only
epilepsy, but we know that our brain in general doesn't work with separated areas
involved specialized to do something. But most of the function require complex integration and
communication between these areas. And also pathology, like epilepsy, we know now that
is linked with alteration of this mechanism of communication between the whole brain.
So we have several methods analyzing the synchronization between the areas
and also extracting more synthesized information like graph theory analysis
that allows to quantify the way all the areas are interconnected among each other.
And then with machine learning techniques
we can develop methods for recognition, automatic recognition, of those areas
that are responsible for seizure generation. So that needs to be removed from the other areas.
we use these recordings and these patients to also analyze response, electrophysiological response,
to certain cognitive functions like memory or emotion perception
and we analyze with the same methods of signal processing,
complex network analysis, so behavior and communication between different regions,
to also understand better how our basic physiological cognitive functions.
So not only the pathology but our normal physiological brain behavior.
I think that neuroscience is the first modern science
that communicate and work with all humanities.
What we research as scientists is something that for centuries has been the research of
philosophers, artists, religions too. So with our memory, our emotions,
our consciousness…and I think that is the most fascinating aspect that nowadays as scientist,
we can study. Because it’s huge, interested and it’s touched something deep of our being.