New Research Directions and Methods in the Frohlich Lab

For those of you who know, the following should not come as a surprise! It is time to look at the questions we are interested in (mechanisms, functions, and perturbations of network oscillations in health and disease) from new perspectives. Here are some of the new angles that we are currently working on integrating into our research:

• Microbiome: I know we are kind of late with this as this has become a major hype over the last few years. Yet, some of the more recent findings look truly intriguing and we have several model systems such as the maternal immune activation model of psychiatric disorders for which the microbiome results look very exciting.
• Entrainment by rhythm and musics: I think that the way the brain responds to periodic stimulation via tACS or TMS may translate / resemble how to the brain responds to periodic sensory input. And if I may take this a step farther, perhaps the rhythm based therapeutic interventions for disorders such as autism may have a mechanistic basis that strongly resembles what we have been studying for tACS?
• Chronic pain: As it turns out, chronic pain is not only a massive public health crisis, but also very poorly understood at the level of network dynamics. The little we know points towards disorganization of thalamo-cortical rhythms - a topic the Frohlich Lab should be well equipped to study!
• and some more...

As you can see, these topics do conceptually relate to what we are focusing on but also bring a whole set of new methods we need to master. As I have learned almost five years ago when we started to build the lab and we were novices at the majority of methods, good collaborations with experts in the field and hiring trainees who have the according background are the two most important things to avoid stupid beginner's mistakes. Hopefully we can avoid those! If you have interest/background on any of the topics above and you are reading this, please reach out to me - I would love to chat with you!