Neurosalience

In this conversation, we cover the history of the Brain Art SIG through the time when it was run by the Neuro Bureau. We discuss what brain art or more generally science art is, as well as go into some of the thoughts on what the best features of brain art are, and how essentially, any scientist trying to convey the essence of their findings, is an artist. We go on to discuss some of the competitions and directions that the Brain Art SIG may take in the future. The discussion also went into how diversity in this SIG, the field of Brain Mapping, and science, in general, is so important - as each culture and group brings a unique and valuable perspective.

This week’s podcast is centered on physiologic fMRI. Generally, when people think of fMRI, they think of a way to map neuronal function, however there is so much information about neurovascular physiology in the signal. Many researchers who use fMRI may not realize all of the potentially untapped information—and confounds!—in the fMRI time series. Dr Jean Chen and Dr Molly Bright each run research groups that focus on this information in complementary ways. Both use physiologic manipulations and an array of acquisition methods to probe and characterize details of the hemodynamic response, though their two research programs focus on different aspects of the haemodynamic response function. In this podcast, they highlight the importance of physiologic fMRI for the field. They also consider the challenges facing women in male-dominated research fields and how the life of women scientists might be improved.

In this week’s podcast, you’ll hear about clinical applications of resting-state fMRI from Dr Michael Fox. You’ll hear some of the highlights of his research, from the beginnings at Wash U, including his early work on resting-state fMRI and the issue of global signal regression, to his more recent pioneering work on lesion network mapping. Through this, you’ll find out about how lesions can impact behavior through their effects on functional networks. This approach is a promising inroad of fMRI towards clinical utility.

Peter Bandetti talks to Catie Chang, who walks us through her thought process regarding pulling information out of the fMRI time series. After discussing some of the ongoing issues in fMRI, such as whether or not to use global signal regression to remove noise, she leads us into a commonly overlooked effect in fMRI—that of changes in arousal and vigilance. In particular, this has measurable effects on the resting state fMRI signal. She discusses the perspective that one person’s artifact may be another’s useful signal, depending on the goal of the study.

In this week's episode, Peter Bandettini talks to directly to MRI scanner vendors. Together, they try to reconcile the importance of fMRI in research contexts with the market pressures of developing clinical applications. As fMRI has virtually no clinical market, does it really influence vendor decisions on pulse sequences and hardware? Could more be done aside from making fMRI more clinically relevant? In this discussion, you’ll hear some fascinating history into the early days of echo planar imaging and high speed imaging, as well as insight into the processes by which products are prioritised. You’ll also find out a possible future of how fMRI may begin to become more clinically useful.

For our third episode, we bring you a birds-eye view of modeling messy biologic systems, namely the brain. Peter Bandettini talks to Danielle Bassett about the challenges of measurement accuracy and what scale might be most informative for modeling, including how to make do with what we have. From the clinical perspective, they talk about network control theory for modulating networks for therapy and discuss limitations in technology. They also talk about the limits of network modeling and the search for the equivalent of an idea as powerful as “natural selection” for the brain. In the second part of the podcast they discuss bias in science and what Danielle is doing to help increase transparency to combat this bias.

Peter Bandettini introduces Aperture, a new open access publishing platform for neuroimaging research that he co-founded with Jean-Baptiste Poline. Joining them both are the new Aperture Editor In Chief, Tonya White and the journal manager, Kay Vanda. Together, they discuss the motive, history, steps for creation, and current status of Aperture. It was created with the strong support of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping, and aims to be a peer-reviewed platform for publishing papers, but also various other types of research objects that do often not find space in conventional journals, including data, educational tutorials and code. While there is still work to be done to be fully up and running, many insights into this process are shared and discussed.

Peter Bandettini chats with Rachael Stickland, where they set out some of the exciting conversations you’ll hear on OHBM Neurosalience. The name ‘Neurosalience’ highlights the aim of this podcast - to put a spotlight on important developments, discoveries and controversies in the world of human brain mapping. Find out why this podcast was set up, what the main themes and topics will be, and what to look forward to with the first few episodes.