Computational Sensemaking on Examples of Knowledge Discovery from Neuroscience Data: Towards Enhancing Stroke Rehabilitation

Strokes are often associated with persistent impairment of a lower limb. Functional brain mapping is a set of techniques from neuroscience for mapping biological quantities (computational maps) into spatial representations of the human brain as functional cortical tomography, generating massive data. Our goal is to understand cortical reorganization after a stroke and to develop models for optimizing rehabilitation with non-invasive electroencephalography. The challenge is to obtain insight into brain functioning, in order to develop predictive computational models to increase patient outcome. There are many EEG features that still need to be explored with respect to cortical reorganization. In the present work we use independent component analysis, and data visualization mapping as tools for sensemaking. Our results show activity patterns over the sensorimotor cortex, involved in the execution and association of movements; our results further supports the usefulness of inverse mapping methods and generative models for functional brain mapping in the context of non-invasive monitoring of brain activitity.