Kayleigh Gultig

Title

Smart­phone-based neu­ro­met­ric eval­u­a­tions: A scal­able approach to neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal diagnostics 

Abstract

Neu­ro­met­ric assays of brain func­tion can reveal fun­da­men­tal mech­a­nisms under­ly­ing neu­ropsy­chi­atric con­di­tions. Typ­i­cal­ly, they require cen­tral­ly locat­ed equip­ment in a lab­o­ra­to­ry test facil­i­ty and as a result these tests are often unpleas­ant for par­tic­i­pants as they require instru­ments attached to their face and can­not be used at scale in dai­ly clin­i­cal practice. 

Recent­ly, we have devel­oped a smart­phone-based soft­ware plat­form, termed Blin­kLab, to per­form neu­robe­hav­ioral test­ing free from facial instru­ments or oth­er fixed-loca­tion equip­ment. This AI plat­form is designed to be used at home or in sim­i­lar envi­ron­ments, inde­pen­dent­ly or with the assis­tance of a care­giv­er, while fol­low­ing instruc­tions from the mobile-device application. 

The tests include, but are not lim­it­ed to, eye­blink con­di­tion­ing, a form of sen­so­ry-motor asso­cia­tive learn­ing, pre­pulse inhi­bi­tion of the acoustic star­tle response, which mea­sures the abil­i­ty to fil­ter out irrel­e­vant infor­ma­tion through sen­so­ri­mo­tor gat­ing, and star­tle habit­u­a­tion, which mea­sures the abil­i­ty for the intrin­sic damp­ing of repet­i­tive stim­uli. In my sem­i­nar, I will show that our new approach pro­vides a scal­able, uni­ver­sal resource for quan­ti­ta­tive assays of cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem func­tion to improve the diag­nos­tic eval­u­a­tion process for neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal con­di­tions such as autism. 

Biog­ra­phy

Kayleigh Gultig obtained her mas­ter’s degree in Neu­ro­sciences from Vri­je Uni­ver­si­ty, Ams­ter­dam and is cur­rent­ly a PhD stu­dent at the Depart­ment of Neu­ro­science, Eras­mus Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­tre in Rot­ter­dam and a researcher at Blin­kLab. Her PhD research focus­es on the use of smart­phone-based neu­ro­met­ric tests for diag­nos­tics and inter­ven­tion mon­i­tor­ing in chil­dren with neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal conditions. 

She start­ed as a researcher at Blin­kLab in 2022 where she did her mas­ter’s the­sis on the effects of acute aer­o­bic exer­cise on asso­cia­tive learn­ing. At Blin­kLab she is involved in clin­i­cal projects focus­ing on autism and ADHD. She also leads col­lab­o­ra­tions with exter­nal part­ners to inves­ti­gate neu­ropsy­chi­atric con­di­tions like schiz­o­phre­nia, rare dis­or­ders such as SHANK2, and neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases, includ­ing var­i­ous forms of spin­ocere­bel­lar ataxia.