Dr Dorottya Szocs

Coming from a medical background, I am interested in exploring which critical brain regions and circuits are responsible for consciousness, both in the healthy and injured brain. The synchronous activity of the thalamo-cortical system has been attributed to be responsible for the intricate ?dialogue? between brain regions, and, notably, for the regulation of arousal. Using functional MRI, I am investigating whether specific subdivisions of the ?thalamus?, the central hub for relaying information across the brain, contribute differently to both loss and re-emergence of consciousness in humans. With this work, I aim to gain insight into the neural mechanisms underlying anaesthesia, which would be crucial for improving the delivery of anaesthesia, and for disorders of consciousness (DOC), where uncovering a critical target for stimulation with DBS could foster recovery from severe disorders like coma.