Brain Stimulation & Simulation Lab


University of Massachusetts Boston
Northeastern University
The Brain Stimulation & Simulation lab (BSS Lab) is directed by Dr. Sumientra Rampersad and has two locations in Boston, Massachusetts. The BSS Lab is part of the College of Science and Mathematics at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and part of the Bouvé College of Health Sciences at Northeastern University. Our lab's main goals are to better understand the working mechanisms of brain stimulation in humans and to improve its application for scientific and clinical purposes. We use finite element simulations with detailed head models and experiments with human volunteers to answer our research questions. Having the expertise to do both simulations and experiments, we can smoothly run model-based experiments to improve experimental outcomes, and then feed these outcomes back to improve our models.

The BSS Lab's main focus is transcranial current stimulation (tCS); we simulate and experiment with direct (tDCS), alternating (tACS), random noise (tRNS) and temporal interference (tTIS) stimulation. Effects of tCS are measured using cognitive tests, motor tasks, electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The lab also collaborates with various academic and clinical partners on research involving transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), electrocortigraphy (ECoG), stereoelectroencephalography (sEEG) and tumor treating fields (TTF).

The BSS Lab is one of nine labs collaborating in NU's Center for Signal Procesing, Imaging, Reasoning and Learning (SPIRAL), which focuses on signal processing, machine learning, distributed computing and optimization. At NU, the BSS lab is located in the new Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex, which also houses the NU Biomedical Imaging Center (NUBIC), and at UMass Boston in the recently built Integrated Sciences Complex. The BSS Lab closely collaborates with the Center for Integrative Biomedical Computing (CIBC) at the University of Utah, which produces open-source software tools for biomedical image-based modeling, simulation, estimation and visualization.

Research Interests

  • Finite element modeling (FEM)
  • Bioelectricity simulations
  • Cognitive neuroscience
  • Transcranial current stimulation (tCS)
  • Temporal interference stimulation (TIS)
  • Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
  • Electrocorticograpy (ECoG)
  • Electroencephalography (EEG)
  • StereoEEG (sEEG)
  • Tumor treating fields (TTF)

News

  • Kurt Jancsy was awarded a Barry Goldwater Scholarship.
  • Reza Hajian joined our lab as a PhD student.
  • We published a paper on a clinical study of TIS in MDD.
  • Sumientra Rampersad received an Early Career Research Excellence Award from UMass Boston.
  • We published a paper on TMS mapping using FEM and neural networks.
  • Armin Moharrer joined our lab as a postdoc.
  • We received an R01 award from NINDS to investigate TIS in computational models, primates and humans.
  • We published a paper on the prospects of iTTF.
  • We published a paper on the retest realiability of rTMS.
  • We published a paper on simulations of intracranial TTF.
  • We published a paper on our new software package UncertainSCI.