Whole-Brain Models of Cognitive Reserve versus Aging-associated Structural Brain Changes and their Modulation with Neurostimulation

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Xenia Kobeleva
• Subject Area: Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience ; Experimental and Theoretical Network Neuroscience
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 575326401

In the proposed project, our team will create novel data-driven adaptations of whole-brain network neural mass models (WBM) by including both local information of pathologies and structural correlates of cognitive aging and cognitive reserve (CR) as influences on model parameters. This approach enables a quantification of separate (that is, each influence on its own), synergistic (different pathologies in synergy), and ntagonistic (pathologies vs. CR) influences on brain network dynamics, which paves the way to data-driven WBMs with personalized model parameters based on clinical or neuroimaging information. By simulating transitions between different states of cognitive aging with varying levels of CR through network control theory, the project will result in suggestions of optimal brain regions as neurostimulation targets to elicit compensatory brain dynamics.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants