Home Department: Undeclared
Mentor: Andreas Tolias (Ophthalmology)

"DeepLabCut for Behavioral Phenotyping in Epilepsy"

Epilepsy is a chronic medical condition affecting 1-2% of the US population, with many patients turning to neurostimulation when medications fail. However, current stimulation outcomes are inconsistent and oftentimes ineffective. To optimize efficacy, Ashley is collaborating on research using WAG/Rij rats to identify precise behavioral biomarkers of seizures. While these rats exhibit cessation of motion during seizures, lack of movement is non-specific to seizure state. Using DeepLabCut, a convolutional neural network for markerless pose estimation, Ashley will quantify postural changes in the rat that distinguish rodent seizure state from normal activity. The Tolias lab hypothesizes that there will be a posture more specific to seizures than motion cessation alone, which will then help optimize validation of novel stimulation paradigms.