Human Brain Mapping
human brain mapping
NII Methods (journal club): NeuroQuery, comprehensive meta-analysis of human brain mapping
We will discuss a recent paper by Taylor et al. (2023): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811923002896. They discuss the merits of highlighting results instead of hiding them; that is, clearly marking which voxels and clusters pass a given significance threshold, but still highlighting sub-threshold results, with opacity proportional to the strength of the effect. They use this to illustrate how there in fact may be more agreement between researchers than previously thought, using the NARPS dataset as an example. By adopting a continuous, "highlighted" approach, it becomes clear that the majority of effects are in the same location and that the effect size is in the same direction, compared to an approach that only permits rejecting or not rejecting the null hypothesis. We will also talk about the implications of this approach for creating figures, detecting artifacts, and aiding reproducibility.
NII Methods (journal club): NeuroQuery, comprehensive meta-analysis of human brain mapping
We will discuss this paper on Neuroquery, a relatively new web-based meta-analysis tool: https://elifesciences.org/articles/53385.pdf. This is different from Neurosynth in that it generates meta-analysis maps using predictive modeling from the string of text provided at the prompt, instead of performing inferential statistics to calculate the overlap of activation from different studies. This allows the user to generate predictive maps for more nuanced cognitive processes - especially for clinical populations which may be underrepresented in the literature compared to controls - and can be useful in generating predictions about where the activity will be for one's own study, and for creating ROIs.
Brain and Mind: Who is the Puppet and who the Puppeteer?
If the mind controls the brain, then there is free will and its corollaries, dignity and responsibility. You are king in your skull-sized kingdom and the architect of your destiny. If, on the other hand, the brain controls the mind, an incendiary conclusion follows: There can be no free will, no praise, no punishment and no purgatory. In this webinar, Professor George Paxinos will discuss his highly respected work on the construction of human and experimental animal brain atlases. He has discovered 94 brain regions, 64 homologies and published 58 books. His first book, The Rat Brain in Stereotaxic Coordinates, is the most cited publication in neuroscience and, for three decades, the third most cited book in science. Professor Paxinos will also present his recently published novel, A River Divided, which was 21 years in the making. Neuroscience principles were used in the formation of charters, such as those related to the mind, soul, free will and consciousness. Environmental issues are at the heart of the novel, including the question of whether the brain is the right ‘size’ for survival. Professor Paxinos studied at Berkeley, McGill and Yale and is now Scientia Professor of Medical Sciences at Neuroscience Research Australia and The University of New South Wales in Sydney.
How to combine brain stimulation with neuroimaging: "Concurrent tES-fMRI
Transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) techniques, including transcranial alternating and direct current stimulation (tACS and tDCS), are non-invasive brain stimulation technologies increasingly used for modulation of targeted neural and cognitive processes. Integration of tES with human functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) provides a novel avenue in human brain mapping for investigating the neural mechanisms underlying tES. Advances in the field of tES-fMRI can be hampered by the methodological variability between studies that confounds comparability/replicability. To address the technical/methodological details and to propose a new framework for future research, the scientific international network of tES-fMRI (INTF) was founded with two main aims: • To foster scientific exchange between researchers for sharing ideas, exchanging experiences, and publishing consensus articles; • To implement the joint studies through a continuing dialogue with the institutes across the globe. The network organized three international scientific webinars, in which considerable heterogeneities of technical/methodological aspects in studies combining tES with fMRI were discussed along with strategies to help to bridge respective knowledge gaps, and distributes newsletters that are sent regularly to the network members from the Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.