Eva Woods, BSc (Hons)
Researcher, Trinity College Dublin, Dr. Roisin McMackin
ElectroHD: A Multimodal Electrophysiological Approach to Decipher Neural Network Alterations in premanifest HD
Long before movement or thinking problems appear in Huntington’s disease (HD), the brain’s communication networks are already changing, even though the brain initially compensates well enough that symptoms remain hidden. Eva’s project aims to detect those early changes in people who carry the HD gene but have no symptoms, using two noninvasive tools: EEG, which records natural brain activity during rest and simple tasks linked to attention, language, and social understanding, and TMS-EMG, which gently stimulates the brain to measure how well different circuits communicate and how balanced their excitatory and inhibitory signals are. By combining these approaches, the team will identify which networks shift first, how early these shifts occur, and which measurements are most reliable for tracking progression over time, including whether they can predict when symptoms might begin. The goal is to establish practical, well tolerated tests that can support earlier diagnosis and enable treatment trials at a stage when the brain is more likely to respond to therapy.
