Brain Canada is pleased to announce the awarding of a $1,844,900 2019 Platform Support Grant (PSG) to Dr. Alan Evans and team at the Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital (The Neuro). This funding will support the EEGNet platform, an open repository for electroencephalogram (EEG) data, to better investigate neurodevelopmental, psychiatric, and neurodegenerative brain disorders.
EEG is a non-invasive, inexpensive, and efficient tool for measuring electrical signals in the brain. The EEGNet platform will provide a standardized, open repository of EEG data for the investigation of biomarkers of brain disorders that manifest themselves during the early years of life, disorders such as autism. EEGNet will bring together EEG scientists from across Canada and internationally. They will work to improve our ability to combine EEG data from different laboratories by harmonizing the data formats and analytic tools we all use. We will make use of an existing Brain Canada funded platform, Canadian the Open Neuroscience Platform (CONP), to share EEG data across the country. CONP provides broad generic support for neuroscience data-sharing but EEGNet will focus specifically upon EEG data at a much deeper level in terms of improved data analysis tools and studies of patient cohorts with EEG. These tools will be enhanced to allow earlier detection of early EEG abnormalities in (i) infant or child-onset developmental disorders, (ii) psychiatric or behavioural disorders (depression, risk-taking behaviour), (iii) neurodegenerative diseases, as well as the study of states of consciousness (sleep, wakefulness, coma, anaesthesia).
Five CERVO researchers are members of the team: Yves De Koninck, Philippe Albouy, Shirley Fecteau, Isabelle Blanchette, and Célyne Bastien. Their role will be to participate in the development of tools that will be used and integrated in the EEGNet platform (a researcher technician to acquire EEG data and a EEG developer will be recruited with these funds) and to participate in data sharing.
See the official announcement by Brain Canada:
https://braincanada.ca/news/canadian-research-platform-receives-major-funding-boost/
