Supervisor: Dr D Fernández-Espejo
Application deadline: Monday, November 23, 2026
Funding: Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
About the Project
Non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) or Focused Ultrasound Stimulation (FUS) can successfully modulate neural excitability. It is possible to deliver NIBS safely in the MRI scanner, thus enabling us to interfere with brain function while we record neural changes in real time. This allows us to establish causal inferences between brain and behaviour, with drastic implications in the field of cognitive neuroscience. NIBS has also led to new therapeutic interventions for psychiatric and neurologic conditions.
The effects of NIBS are highly heterogeneous across subjects. This may arise from differences in cranial thickness, cortical folding as well as from the way individual brains are ‘wired’ and its baseline functional state immediately before NIBS. These differences are exacerbated in clinical populations where changes in brain structure and integrity are more pronounced (as a result of damage). The main aim of this PhD is to understand and characterise individual variability in behavioural and neural effects of NIBS, and to identify markers that can predict whether an individual will be likely to respond to a particular stimulation protocol. The student will focus on advanced analyses of structural and functional MRI data and assess how differences in neuroanatomy and function of specific networks modulate individual responses to NIBS. They will test the power for different classification techniques and explore the construction of Decision Tree classifiers. These provide explicit information about why the algorithm came to a its classification decision and, thus, can have higher value in medical contexts, where justification can be very important.
Reducing the variability in responses to NIBS by using protocols tailored to each individual will not only advance applications for investigating how different cognitive functions emerge in the brain but also increase the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions.
Funding notes
Competitive funding via Midlands Integrative Biosciences Training Partnership (MIBTP).
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/mibtp/
Please consult this page to check eligibility and how to apply.
