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I was born in Jerusalem in 1978. I am married to Yedidya and mother of David. I acquired a B.Sc. in mathematics and computer science with honors from the Hebrew University in 2001. I started my graduate studies at the ICNC in 2002, and joined the lab of Prof. Hagai Bergman as a Ph.D. student. The topic of my Ph.D. research is synchronous oscillations in the Basal Ganglia – cortical network and their relation to the Parkinsonian tremor. My research involves simultaneous recording in the motor cortex and in the Basal Ganglia, as well as electromyogram (EMG) recording of the hand muscles. The experiment is performed on monkeys both in the normal state and after MPTP injection, which kills the dopaminergic neurons and causes a Parkinsonian syndrome.

 

The Basal Ganglia constitute a feed-forward loop that receives input from all areas of the cortex and projects back primarily to the frontal cortex. Parkinson's disease is characterized by several electrophysiological changes in the loop as a whole and in the Basal Ganglia in particular. These changes include appearance of periodic oscillations and enhanced firing synchronization. The relationship between the tremor and the Parkinsonian synchronous oscillations is under debate. It has been proposed that the Parkinsonian tremor is of a central origin and is caused by these periodic oscillations. There are several lines of evidence to this hypothesis, but there are some reports on neural periodic oscillations that appear with no seen tremor.

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