Development of neuromarker(s) for assessment of alcohol addiction

Problem Statement: Alcohol addiction is a chronic and complex brain disorder causing devastating individual and social problems. Additionally, alcohol causes 3.3 million deaths a year worldwide, close to 6% of all deaths. Many of these deaths are associated with alcohol addiction. Therefore, it's important to look into methods for the diagnosis as well as the treatment of alcohol addiction.

Issues with Current Solutions: Conventionally, screening and assessment of alcohol-related problems are mainly based on self-test reports. However, the accuracy of self-test reports has been questioned, especially for heavy drinkers, because the self-test reports may misguide the diagnosis due to the patient's memory loss (the patients cannot measure their alcohol consumption) and/ or dishonest behavior. Therefore, this research proposes to develop an objective and quantitative method for the detection of alcohol addiction.

Challenges: As alcohol addiction results in changes in brain dynamics, hence, it is vital to investigate and develop a method based on brain activity. However, the main challenge in developing such an objective and quantitative method lies in its implementation for screening in smaller clinical setups. This limits the investigation to electroencephalogram (EEG) which is low cost, highly mobile and has good temporal resolution. Other modalities like MRI, PET etc are not feasible to be employed in smaller clinical settings.

Solution: With current innovations in brain EEG signals, the brain pathways involved in addiction can be investigated. In the last few decades, EEG research has been used to understand the complex underlying processes associated with the pathophysiology of addiction. Interpreting such processes using brain networks using EEG can not only help in diagnosing addiction but also assist in treating addiction. This research aims to develop neuromarker(s) based on brain network interpretation using EEG. The neuromarker will involve the features extraction and corresponding development of the machine learning model.

Few Words About Supervision: I have recently moved to FIT at Brno University of Technology. I have decade long experience of working in the field of neuro-signal and neuroimage processing and I am currently in the process of setting up a research group in this area. This is a multidisciplinary project and it will involve working with clinicians. However, the core of the project is related to IT in terms of development of a new method. Please feel free to contact me at malik@fit.vutbr.cz