User:RomainFrAlb/sandbox

add to def: Neurophysics aim to describe various cerebral activities using physics with the purpose of studying them and combining them with other neurosciences to better understand neural processes. The properties studied are for the most part electrical, mechanical or fluidic. Among other examples, the theorisation of ectopic action potentials in neurons using a Kramers-Moyal expansion and the description of physical phenomena measured during an EEG using a dipole approximation, are using neurophysics to better understand neural activity.

Recording techniques
Old techniques to record brain activity using physical phenomena are already widespread in research and medicine. Electroencephalography (EEG) uses electrophysiology to measure the electrical activity of the brain. This technique, with which Hans Berger first recorded the brain electrical activity in 1924, is non-invasive and uses electrodes placed on the scalp of the patient to record brain activity. Based on the same principle,electrocorticography (ECoG) requires a craniotomy to record the electrical activity directly on the cerebral cortex.

In the recent decades, physicists have come up with technologies and devices to image the brain and the its activity.The Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) technique, discovered by Seiji Ogawa in 1990, studies the blood flow inside the brain. Based on the existing medical imaging technique Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and on the link between the neural activity and the cerebral blood flow, this tool enables scientists to study the brain activity when trigerred by a controlled stimulation. The Two Photons Microscopy (2P), invented by Winfried Denk (for which he has been awarded the Brain Prize in 2015 ), JH Strickler and WW Webb in 1990 at Cornell University, uses fluorescent proteins and dyes to image brain cells. This technique combines the two-photon absorption, first theorized by Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1931, with lasers. Nowadays, this technique is widely used in research to study the behavior of a specific type of neuron.

Brain stimulation
Near-infrared deep brain stimulation via upconversion nanoparticle–mediated optogenetics DOI: 10.1126/science.aaq1144

Wireless magnetothermal deep brain stimulation DOI: 10.1126/science.1261821

Magneto-Electric Nano-Particles for Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0044040

Theories of consciousness
Consciousness is yet an unknown mechanism and theorists have come up with physical explanations for its roots. Some theories relie on the idea that consiciousness could be explained by the disturbances in the brain electromagnectic field generated by action potentials trigerred during brain activity, these theories are called electromagnetic theories of consciousness. Other group of hypotheses suggest that consciousness can not be explained by classical dynamics but with quantum mechanics and quantum phenomena. These hypotheses are gathered into the idea of quantum mind and were first introduced by Eugene Wigner.

Neurophysics institutes

 * The Theoretical Neurophysics Laboratory, University of Bremen
 * Department of Neurophysics, Max-Planck Institute
 * Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Neurophysics group, Aarhus University
 * W. M. Keck Center for Neurophysics, UCLA
 * Neurophysics Program, Georgia State University
 * Neurophysics at the Institute of Neurology, University College of London

Awards
Among the list of prices that reward neurophysicists for their contribution to neurology and related fields, the most notable ones are the Brain Prize. The last laureastes are Adrian Bird and Huda Zoghbi for "their groundbreaking work to map and understand epigenetic regulation of the brain and for identifying the gene that causes Rett syndrome". The other most relevant prizes that can be awarded to neurophysicists are the NAS Award in the Neurosciences, the Kavli Prize. To some extent the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine also rewards neurophycists with for instance Neher and Sakmann in 1991 for the patch clamp, or Lauterbur and Mansfield for their work on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in 2003.