Aurreko ekintzak: Patrícia Figueiredo. Imaging the brain’s neuronal (and non-neuronal) physiology using functional MRI (fMRI)

What: Imaging the brain’s neuronal (and non-neuronal) physiology using functional MRI (fMRI)

Where:  BCBL auditorium (and BCBL zoom room 2)

Who: Patrícia Figueiredo, PhD, Associate Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Universidade de Lisboa, and Principal Investigator at the Biomedical Engineering Lab (LaSEEB) of Instituto for Systems and Robotics - Lisboa, Portugal.

When: Thursday, March 31st at 2:30 PM.

Our understanding of the human brain has been drastically transformed in the past two decades with the discovery of a large-scale organisation into functionally interconnected networks exhibiting rich spatiotemporal dynamics. The workhorse for the study of brain function has been functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures neuronal activity indirectly based on neurovascular mechanisms driving blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signals. Because of their vascular nature, these are also highly susceptible to contributions from non-neuronal physiology, and disentangling neurovascular from purely vascular origins remains one of the greatest challenges in fMRI studies. In this talk, I will present work measuring both neuronal and non-neuronal physiology using fMRI, and show how these measurements may provide sensitive biomarkers of different brain disorders.