Translational Neurophysiology & Brain Stimulation

Welcome!

The Toronto Western Hospital is a pioneering center for a neurosurgical procedure called deep brain stimulation (DBS). DBS is a standard of care procedure for patients with Parkinson's disease, essential tremor, dystonia, and has garnered much attention for many other refractory neurological disorders. The Toronto Western Hospital is also home of the Krembil Brain Institute and our Translational Neurophysiology and Brain Stimulation (TNBS) research laboratory. The TNBS team is committed to to understanding human brain function and dysfunction, and to the development of new brain stimulation methods to improve patient care.

About Us

Our team specializes in performing recordings of individual neurons from deep within the brains of patients undergoing awake neurosurgery. This procedure is undertaken as part of the standard clinical care routine for the purpose of generating a "map" of the brain in order to ensure that our surgical interventions are applied to the correct location.

Research Activities

The operating room also provides a unique research opportunity. Acquisition of intracranial brain recordings (e.g. single-neuron, local field potential, electrocorticography) from awake and behaving humans allows our team to study in vivo human physiology and pathophysiology, brain stimulation mechanisms, synaptic plasticity, and more. Generally, our work involves the application of biomedical signal processing techniques, machine learning, and computational modelling to understand the behaviour of the brain and its responses to forms of stimuli. To this end, our team also works with patients outside of the operating room environment, leveraging various non-invasive brain (e.g. electroencephalography and magnetoencephalography).

Postdoctoral researcher Dr. Max Scherer presenting at the CRANIA Conference, Toronto, Canada.

PhD student Dallas Leavitt performing intraoperative experiments during a DBS surgery.

Prof. Milosevic assisting Dr. Suneil Kalia in pioneering the first robotic DBS surgery in Canada.

Dr. Taufik Valiante, Dr. Leon Steiner, Prof. Milosevic, and Srdjan Sumarac together at the Human Single Neuron Meeting, Los Angeles, USA.

Prof. Milosevic pictured inside the operating room during a brain mapping procedure for DBS surgery.

Srdjan Sumarac, Andre Cornejo, Tony Franco, and Prof. Milosevic participating in Pedaling for Parkinson's Canada to raise funds for Parkinson's research.

Graduate students David Crompton, Tony Franco, Dallas Leavitt, Srdjan Sumarac, Yijinmide Buren, Kiah Spencer, and postdoctoral researcher Max Scherer at the Canadian Neuromodulation Society Annual Meeting in Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, Canada.

Prof. Milosevic and postdoctoral researcher Dr. Leon Steiner enjoying some time off from the DBS World Expert Summit in Würzburg, Germany

environment

The TNBS Lab, physically located at the Krembil Brain Institute, consists of wet and dry lab space and a permanent fixture within a state-of-the-art operating theater known as the CRANIA Neuromodulation Suite.

Prof, Milosevic holds appointments at the Krembil Brain Institute, KITE Research Institute, and the University of Toronto’s Institutes of Biomedical Engineering and Medical Sciences. As such, the TNBS team consists of students enrolled in graduate programs at University of Toronto as well as Postdoctoral Fellows and Research personnel directly appointed at the University Health Network. We moreover proudly collaborate with a multidisciplinary team of neurosurgeons, neurologists, engineers, computational neuroscientists, basic physiologists, and more. Our research generally involves the acquisition and analysis of neural data from patients with neurological disorders. We collect intracranial (i.e. single-neuron and local field potential activity from subcortical nuclei and electrocorticography from the surface of the brain) and non-invasive (i.e. magnetoencephalography) brain recordings in the context of various research projects (i.e. behavioural tasks, brain stimulation, brain-computer interfaces, synaptic plasticity, etc.).

Prospective students and researchers with experience and/or interest in neuromodulation, signal processing, machine learning, computational neuroscience, instrumentation, and/or brain-machine interfaces can contact Dr. Milosevic by email at any time.

Translational Neurophysiology & Brain Stimulation