OHBM Neurosalience

In this episode Peter Bandettini, Nikolaus Kriegeskorte, Aina Puce and Michael Breakspear discuss the future of scientific publishing.Episode ProducersOmer Faruk GulbanXuqian Michelle Li

Join host Peter Bandettini as he interviews Michael Milham, a pioneer in functional brain imaging and big data neuroscience. In this episode, Dr. Milham shares insights from his groundbreaking work on large-scale fMRI datasets, deep phenotyping, and the future of precision psychiatry.Topics include: - Challenges and opportunities in big data MRI - Individual variability in brain imaging - Resting-state fMRI and pipeline reliability - Integrating multimodal and real-world data - AI, machine learning, and biomarkers in psychiatryDr. Milham is Chief Science Officer at the Child Mind Institute and a leader behind major initiatives like the creation of large, open-access datasets (e.g., ADHD-200, Healthy Brain Network) to enable population-level studies. Tune in for a deep dive into the evolving landscape of neuroimaging research and its clinical potential.We hope you enjoy this episode!Episode ProducersAlfie WearnOmer Faruk Gulban

In this episode of the OHBM Neurosalience Podcast, host Peter Bandettini sits down with Dr. Simon Eickhoff, a leading clinician-scientist in brain mapping. As a panelist at the 2024 OHBM meeting in Seoul, Dr. Eickhoff brought fascinating insights—this conversation picks up where that discussion left off.Dr. Eickhoff, a professor and director at Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf and Forschungszentrum Jülich, works at the crossroads of neuroanatomy, data science, and brain medicine. His research focuses on understanding individual differences in brain organization, aging, and psychiatric disorders using machine learning and large-scale neuroimaging analysis.Topics include: - The challenges of deriving biomarkers and using fMRI in clinical settings - His experience leading the journal Human Brain Mapping & the evolving publishing landscape - The role of AI in psychiatry and the future of precision medicineJoin us for a deep dive into the innovations and challenges shaping neuroscience and brain imaging today!Episode ProducersXuqian Michelle LiOmer Faruk Gulban

This episode features Dr. Sepideh Sadaghiani directing the CONNECTlab at Beckman Institute for Advanced Science & Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Sadaghiani’s lab explores large-scale brain networks, focusing on cognitive control, attention, and spontaneous neural activity. Using fMRI, EEG, and genetics, they uncover how brain connectivity shapes perception and behavior. Tune in for cutting-edge insights into the brain’s dynamic communication.

Episode Producers

Omer Faruk Gulban

Karthik Sama

This episode features Prof. Mac Shine from the University of Sydney. Mac is a systems neurobiologist interested in understanding how neurobiology supports awareness and flexible, parallel behavior. This engaging conversation between Peter and Mac offers takeaways for neuroscience from the study of other complex systems, such as weather patterns. It further explores how principles from fluid dynamics could inspire ways to rethink brain states and interpret fMRI data. The discussion also highlights the inherently interdisciplinary nature of neuroscience and emphasizes the crucial role of communication between its subfields as the field navigates these exciting times. For more details check out the episode!

We hope you enjoy it!

Episode Producers

Alfie Wearn

Karthik Sama

Join Peter Bandettini as he sits down with Seiji Ogawa, the visionary scientist behind the discovery of BOLD (blood oxygenation level-dependent) contrast fMRI. In this insightful conversation, Dr. Ogawa reflects on his groundbreaking work, the evolution of neuroimaging, and the challenges of translating fMRI into clinical practice. 1. Ogawa’s Early Journey – From Stanford to Bell Labs, and the influences that shaped his career. 2. The Discovery of BOLD fMRI – How experiments with hemoglobin oxygenation laid the foundation for modern neuroimaging. 3. Impact on Neuroscience – Why fMRI became a cornerstone in understanding brain function. 4. Challenges in Clinical Translation – Variability and reliability in single-subject analyses. 5. Scientific Reflections – Ogawa’s thoughts on curiosity, persistence, and the art of discovery. 6. Future Directions – Exploring brain interactions, neurovascular coupling, and innovations in imaging techniques. Notable Quotes: “If you can look into your brain without opening your skull… that’s a great thing.” “The important thing is to know what is important.” “Many phenomena don’t last long, but fMRI has proven to be enduringly significant.” Seiji Ogawa’s contributions have left an indelible mark on neuroscience, inspiring researchers worldwide. Don’t miss this fascinating exploration of his life, work, and ongoing curiosity about the mysteries of the human brain. Episode Producers Omer Faruk Gulban Nagashree Thovinakere

Our guest today is Dr. Vesa Kiviniemi, a radiologist and researcher at Oulu University in Finland.

Dr. Kiviniemi’s recent focus has been on using an extremely high-speed MRI technique called MREG. This technique allows for the collection of an entire volume of data with a TR of just 100 milliseconds, using a stack-of-spirals approach. The reason he values this technique so much is that it enables him to examine various types of brain pulsations, including cardiac and respiratory pulsations, as well as what he refers to as glymphatic or CSF pulsations.

In this episode, Dr. Kiviniemi explores how he has applied this technique in his research. He also discusses the history of our understanding of the glymphatic system, its potential functions, the many unknowns surrounding it, and the opportunities it presents for future research. Among other topics, he explains why using this high-speed technique might complement—or in some cases even be better than—slower approaches in certain ways.

We hope you enjoy the conversation!

Episode producers:

Xuqian Michelle Li

Omer Faruk Gulban

This episode is unique in the sense that it’s actually a talk Peter gave during the OHBM 2024 meeting, specifically during the education session on communicating science.

Peter wanted to share this talk because it focuses on the podcast and his own approach to creating it. He discusses his philosophy, heuristics, what he considers important about podcasting, and why he enjoys doing it. The talk emphasizes the value of conversation and explains how the podcast showcases the human side of scientific investigators and the stories behind their research.

We hope you enjoy it!

Episode producers:

Omer Faruk Gulban

Xuqian Michelle Li

In this episode, Peter Bandettini interviews Matthew Cobb (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Cobb), the author of the book “The idea of the brain: The Past and Future of Neuroscience”.

Episode producers:

Omer Faruk Gulban

Alfie Wearn

Our guest is today is Dr. Alan Evans. He completed his Ph.D. (1979) and post-doctoral fellowship studying structure-function interaction of proteins at the Department of Biophysics at Leeds University in the U.K.  Subsequently he worked for five years as a PET physicist at Atomic Energy of Canada in Ottawa.

In 1984, he joined the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University, where his research interests include multimodal brain imaging with PET and MRI, structural network modelling, and large scale neural informatics.

For the past 40 years, he has been an institution at McGill University. He is the co-director of the Ludmer Centre and He is currently Co-Director of both the Ludmer Centre for Neuroinformatics and Mental Health and the Helmholtz International BigBrain Analytics Learning Laboratory (HIBBALL). He is Scientific Director of McGill’s “Healthy Brains, Healthy Lives” (HBHL) , and Scientific Director of the Canadian Open Neuroscience Platform (CONP). The technical infrastructure underpinning CONP includes a multi-modal databasing system (LORIS)  and an international grid-processing portal (CBRAIN) both developed in Prof. Evan’s MCIN lab. These platforms also support international brain networks, notably the Canada-China-Cuba Axis and the Global Brain Consortium, both co-chaired by Prof. Evans. Furthermore, he was named the Victor Dahdaleh Chair in Neurosciences in October of 2022.

Episode producers

Xugian Michelle Li

Nagashree Thovinakere

Today our guest is Dr. Angie Laird, who trained as an imaging physicist, but has evolved into a cognitive neuroscientist and a true pioneer in meta-analysis of fMRI data. Dr. Laird has spent the bulk of her career developing novel data analysis algorithms, neuroscience informatics tools, and neuroimaging ontologies to yield analytic strategies for improving investigations into functional brain networks of healthy individuals as well as in populations with psychiatric and neurologic diseases and disorders. Early on she has seen the untapped value in meta-analysis, and has fostered growth in this fundamentally important area in functional brain imaging.

Dr. Laird received her B.S. in Physics from Florida State University in 1998, and her Ph.D. in Medical Physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2002. She was a faculty member at the Research Imaging Institute of the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio from 2004-2012, and currently she is Professor and Director for Imaging Science at Florida International University in Miami. Along with her development of meta-analysis tools and her own research, she plays a central role in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) consortium which is the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the United States.

This was a great conversation that spanned the early culture of fMRI research, early efforts towards data sharing, to the current practices today where data sharing and analyzing data across studies and from large shared datasets is becoming the norm. We also spent time talking about the origin, logistics, and impact of the ABCD project.

We hope you enjoy it!

Episode producers:

Omer Faruk Gulban

Xuqian Michelle Li

In this special kickoff to the new season of Neurosalience, we turn the tables as Peter Bandettini, our host, joins us as the guest! We dive into highlights from last season and explore exciting plans for the episodes ahead. In addition, we had an insightful conversation on resting-state fMRI, computational modeling of the brain, and the importance of deep sampling in individuals. Plus, we discuss some news on the shifting landscape of scientific publishing. 

We hope that you enjoy the new season of Neurosalience.

Episode producers:

Omer Faruk Gulban

In this final episode of Neurosalience Season 4, Peter Bandettini hosts Janaina Mourao-Miranda, Simon Eickhoff, Sepideh Sadaghiani, Thomas Yeo, Michael Milham. The discussion was centered around: 

1. Clinical relevance of fMRI today.

2. Future directions of neuroimaging, promises to get excited about, and overpromises that need to be considered cautiously.

3. How can fMRI help to understand the brain from a general point of view.

This is the final episode of Neurosalience Season 4! See you in the next season :)

Episode producers:

Omer Faruk Gulban

In this episode, Peter Bandettini hosts Jon Polimeni, Renzo Huber, Nikola Stikov, Luca Vizioli, and Essa Yacoub. They talk about the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) and Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) conferences where they have attended both over many years. The conversation revolves around what each meeting offers, how they differ, how we might increase cross-talk, and why that would be a good thing. They also highlight some of the exciting work and developments gleaned from ISMRM that might not appear at OHBM. Enjoy! 

Episode producers:

Omer Faruk Gulban

Here Kevin Sitek (the Chair of the OHBM Communications Committee and a Research Assistant Professor in Communication Sciences and Disorders at Northwestern University), Sofie Valk (Research group leader and Scientific representative at Otto Hahn Group Cognitive Neurogenetics), and Hae-Jeong Park (Professor of Nuclear Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine, South Korea) discuss what to expect from OHBM 2024, including the education sessions, Oral Sessions, Symposia, Keynotes, and Talairach Lecture as well as discussion of the many informal round table sessions offered, the social events, the outreach, the SIGs, and the Communication Committee. They also discussed a bit about Korea and how the meeting came to be here this year. A great discussion with lots of information! See you there June 23 to June 27! 

Episode producers:

Omer Faruk Gulban

Xuqian Michelle Li

Dr. Vince Calhoun is the founding director of the tri-institutional center for translational research in Neuroimaging and Data Science (TReNDS) which is a consortium formed by Georgia State University, Georgia Tech, and Emory University.

In this part 2 of Peter and Vince’s discussion, they dive further into addressing the challenges that fMRI and other modalities face in finding useful information about psychiatric disorders that can be used clinically. They talk about what neuroimaging has taught us about schizophrenia, as well as the goals and challenges of establishing clinical relevance. They also talk a bit about the importance of a data driven approach to development of processing methods, as well as variability in fMRI data, and the challenges and opportunities that big data sets offer, the promise of data fusion, and multivariate modeling. Lastly, they also discuss his latest work in deep learning and what it offers, and spend quite a bit of time discussing data driven approaches vs model driven approaches.

This discussion was an outstanding perspective builder. We hope that you enjoy it!

Episode producers:

Omer Faruk Gulban

Xuqian Michelle Li

#A conversation with 2024 Keynote Speaker Nicola Palomero-Gallagher TODO: Link to blog post Interviewers: - Naomi L. Gaggi - Beatriz Padrela

A conversation with 2024 Keynote Lecture presenter Luis Concha

https://www.ohbm-com.com/blog/a-conversation-with-keynote-speaker-luis-concha

Interviewers:

- Eduardo A. Garza-Villarreal

- Diana Giraldo

Today our guest is Dr. Vince Calhoun, who's also a longtime colleague and friend of Peter Bandettini. Vince is the founding director of the tri-institutional center for translational research in Neuroimaging and Data Science (TReNDS) which is a consortium formed by Georgia State University, Georgia Tech, and Emory University.

Vince Received his BS in electrical engineering from the University of Kansas, in 1991, two masters degrees in Biomedical engineering and information systems from Johns Hopkins in 1993, and 1996, and his Ph.D. in EE from the University of Maryland Baltimore County in 2002. After four years at Yale University, he became President of the Mind Research Network and Distinguished Professor at the University of New Mexico, before he moved to Atlanta for his present position several years ago.

Vince's focus over the years could be summarized as using fMRI and other neuroimaging methods while developing processing methods to extract every possible useful bit of information. He's been prodigiously engaged and productive for over 20 years advancing multi-modal brain imaging, data fusion, and machine learning. His work has inspired new ways of looking at the data.

In this discussion, Peter and Vince talk about work, professional journey from the east coast to New Mexico and now to Atlanta, as well as his successful battle with cancer in about 2010. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Episode producers:

Xuqian Michelle Li

Johanna Bayer

Omer Faruk Gulban

A conversation with 2024 Keynote Lecture presenter Mac Shine https://www.ohbm-com.com/blog/a-conversation-with-dr-mac-shine-ohbm-2024-keynote-interview-series-pt3 Interviewers: - Alfie Wearn - Xuqian Michelle Li

A conversation with 2024 Talairach Lecture presenter Zarin Machanda

https://www.ohbm-com.com/blog/a-conversation-with-2024-talairach-lecture-presenter-zarin-machanda

Interviewers: - Elisa Guma - Lavinia Uscatescu

Today we zoom in on Vancouver British Columbia to interview Dr. Todd Woodward, who is a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia and director of the UBC Brain Dynamics Laboratory. He's also the Director of the Cognitive Neuroscience of Schizophrenia Laboratory at BC Mental Health and Addictions Research Institute in Vancouver.

Dr. Woodward received his Ph.D. in Experimental Neuropsychology at the University of Victoria in 1999, and performed his post-doc in the department of psychology at UBC. Since 2003 he's moved up from research scientist to professor - all at the University of British Columbia. 

He's been working at the interface of processing methods and well-crafted experimental designs to probe the networks that may be disrupted in schizophrenia and other disorders. He and his team developed almost two decades ago a unique and elegant method known as constrained principal component analysis ( or CPCA), which he has been applying successfully with many different tasks.

He's also deeply interested in novel non-pharmaceutical interventions that help augment schizophrenia treatment - having developed a program called metacognitive training (MCT), which may allow those with schizophrenia to be able to step back and begin to assess their own beliefs.

This was such a wide ranging conversation which delved into the nuts and bolts of CPCA as well as the potential future role that neuroimaging can play in better understanding and ultimately treating schizophrenia. We hope you enjoy this episode.

Episode producers:

Omer Faruk Gulban

Xuqian Michelle Li

In this episode, our guest is Rotem Botvinik-Nezer, a postdoc at Dartmouth University, working with Dr. Tor Wager in his  Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab. In 2020, Dr. Botvinik-Nezer was first author of an influential paper published in Nature, titled Variability in the analysis of a single neuroimaging dataset by many teams, where the results were compared  from 70 independent teams analyzing a single data set having 9 hypotheses. This paper made it clear that there are many points of variability in data analysis pipelines, and provided further incentives for sharing data and code to grow consensus and replicability. While the popular press suggested that this paper was yet another hit to fMRI, we discuss how even papers that critique the results of this seminal paper ultimately converge in agreement with the overall message of systematic transparency. Dr. Botvinik-Nezer also has a strong interest in how our brains influence our perception of pain, having just published a recent paper showing evidence that regions associated with painful stimuli remain active even when subjects experience less pain while having the belief that a placebo is effective.

In this conversation, Peter and Rotem delve into all these topics and more, but spend  the bulk of the discussion on the interplay between choices in analyses, such as determining a statistical threshold, and  variability in results. We also discuss incentives for users to share data and code and possible ways to create a more solid scaffolding for best practices. 

Episode producers:

Omer Faruk Gulban

Xuqian Michelle Li

Today, we are excited to have Dr. Gang Chen on the podcast. Dr. Chen is the go-to statistics guru for the fMRI community at the NIH and a well-respected scientist worldwide. He is a staff scientist in the group that developed the AFNI software package. As an applied mathematician, Dr. Chen has written a series of insightful papers in the past seven years, bucking the status quo in fMRI processing - essentially saying that we are throwing away too much valuable information by thresholding our data, relying on overly simple and rigid models of the hemodynamic response, not mapping effect sizes, and using center of mass measures to describe clusters of activation. He backs it all up with a rigorous approach characterized by all good statisticians. He is a master in the art of casting a wide net to capture useful data without taking in artifact and noise, finding that sweet spot in data reduction to balance utility with sensitivity. 

In this episode, we hear all about Dr. Chen’s perspectives through these papers, which are so important yet not widely known or embraced by the field. We hope you enjoy it!

Episode producers:

Omer Faruk Gulban

Xuqian Michelle Li

In this episode, it's our pleasure to host Jack Wells who is a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellow at the University College London Center for Advanced Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Wells received his Ph.D. in MRI in the Department of Medical Physics and Bioengineering at  at University College London in 2010, and since he began his scientific career, he's been working at the interface of MRI methodology and neurophysiology - focusing on understanding the Cerebral Spinal Fluid dynamics and how they may relate to the Glymphatic system. He and his colleagues have been among the leaders in using MRI to image and characterize the glymphatic system as well as the  brain - cerebrospinal fluid barrier. The glymphatic system is hypothesized to be the paravascular mechanism by which CSF is washed through brain tissue - typically during sleep - clearing out metabolic waste. It is an incompletely understood yet potentially profoundly important system where its dysfunction  may be at the root of  disorders that include Alzheimer's disease.

In this wonderful conversation we hear all about Jack's and others' work imaging and understanding the hydrodynamics and spatial organization of neurofluids in the brain.

We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did!

If you are interested in working with Nathan, he is currently recruiting for a postdoc! Send your CV to lbc.spreng@gmail.com

Today our guest is Nathan Spreng. Dr. Spreng is the James McGill Professor of Neurology and Neurosurgery and Director of the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital at McGill University.

As an undergraduate, Dr. Spreng was initially interested in pursuing a major in poetry until he took a psychology class that sparked his interest in the brain. He received Ph.D. in 2008 from the University of Toronto in Brian Levine's lab, and post docs with Cheryl Grady at the University of Toronto and Dan Schacter at Harvard. After about 5 years as an assistant professor at Cornell University, he moved to McGill University.

Throughout his career Dr. Spreng has been using fMRI to reveal subtle yet repeatable large-scale brain networks as they relate attention, memory, cognitive control, and social cognition. He has also helped to elucidate the central role that the default network plays in self-generated thought, and in how it dynamically interacts with multiple systems in the brain.

In this episode Peter and Nathan have a far reaching conversation about his work and what it implies, covering his study of age dependence of resting state hippocampal-linked network ensembles, how to move from mapping networks to modeling and understanding mechanisms, the many possible clinical implications of his work, current understanding of Alzheimer's disease, our mutual appreciation for multi-echo EPI, his data release paper of a large multi-echo EPI and structural MRI data set, and much more.

Enjoy listening!

Episode producers:

Alfie Wearn

Omer Faruk Gulban

It is our great pleasure and deep honor to host Dr. Marsel Mesulam who is a giant in the field of Neurology and one of founders of OHBM. Dr. Mesulam is Chief of Behavioral Neurology and the Ruth Dunbar Davee Professor of Neuroscience at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and Professor of Behavioral Neurology at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Mesulam received his MD from Harvard Medical School in 1972, and in 1976 completed residencies at Boston City Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. After a 1 year postdoc at Harvard University he began his tenure in Chicago at Northwestern. Dr. Mesulam's work has been both prodigious and impactful over the years, as his almost 1000 papers have been cited over 140 thousand times. He has written the seminal book, Principles of Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology, and has produced many landmark papers - a few of which we'll discuss in the podcast. One paper that we consider a masterpiece was published in Brain in 1998 and titled From Sensation to Cognition. This can be considered as a required reading for everyone in the field of brain mapping as it lays out so concisely and eloquently, a breathtaking perspective of the structure and functional organization of the human brain.
Dr. Mesulam's research is extremely broad and diverse, having impacted such areas as neural networks and functional imaging, Dementia, Alzheimer's Disease, Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA), Cholinergic Pathways, Acetylcholinesterase Studies, Cognitive Psychology, Neurology, and Neuropsychiatry. He also developed, early in his career, a neuronal marker, Tetramethyl benzidine, that profoundly impacted research in this area.
In this inspiring conversation, Peter and Marsel discuss his early career and what was important for his success, delve into research culture and the value of opportunistic research, and the value of having the freedom and resources to try many things and rapidly change directions that follow interesting leads. They also discuss some of the exciting early days of Neuroimaging and OHBM. Lastly, we go into some of his current research on Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) and the study of temporal pole disease as a window to temporal pole functional significance.
We hope that you enjoy this conversation.

Episode producers:
Alfie Wearn
Omer Faruk Gulban

Dr. Rosenberg received her Ph.D. from the department of Psychology at Yale University, where she also carried out her post doc. In 2019, she started as an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago and is a member of the Chicago Neuroscience Institute.  She has been pioneering the use of connectome-based predictive modeling to capture individual differences in the ability to sustain attention. Attention is fundamental to just about everything that we experience and do and how we navigate the world. It varies over time and each person has different abilities to maintain it. Monica has developed and used extensively a task known as gradCPT, an easy at first but hard to sustain, continuous attention task that allows moment to moment assessment of sustained attention. She has found two networks that characterize high attention vs lower attention, and these have been powerful for characterizing individuals ability to sustain attention. It's also been useful for characterizing differences in such attention-related skills such as reading comprehension.  She's been delving further into both fMRI methodology and the nuances of attention ever since.

In this conversation we talk about her career development, the great environment at Yale, the development of her exciting and impactful  fMRI-based human attention research. We hope you enjoy the conversation!

Episode producers:

Omer Faruk Gulban

Today, we are excited to have Dr. Evan Gordon on the podcast. Evan is an assistant professor in the Neuroimaging Labs Research Center, based in the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Since joining the group and joining forces with what is known as the "midnight scan club," he has gone on a scientific tear, publishing several highly influential papers that make use of the unique high-fidelity data sets, containing up to 11 hours of resting state or task-activated fMRI data for each subject. This powerful approach in fMRI is known as "deep sampling." His findings include insights into unique individual connectivity patterns,  the whole brain use of a novel parcellation approach using boundary maps, and most recently, discovery of effector-specific regions in motor cortex - a finding which is likely to replace in textbooks the classic Penfield maps of the homunculus. 

This was a wonderful conversation where we explored the implementation, benefits, and potential of deep sampling of fMRI data! Evan is not only a creative and productive scientist, but a great conversationalist. We hope you enjoy it!

Episode producers:

Omer Faruk Gulban

Alfie Wearn

Today, our guest is Shella Keilholz. Dr. Keilholz received her Bachelor's in Physics from Missouri University of Science and Technology in 1997, and her PhD in Engineering Physics from the University of Virginia in 2004. She went on to a do a post-doc at NIH in Dr. Alan Koretsky's lab and in 2004 joined the department of Biomedical Engineering at Emory University as a faculty member. She is now a full professor at Emory University and also closely affiliated with Georgia Tech.

Since around 2008 she has been uncovering new spatial and temporal patterns in resting state fMRI. She was the first to identify spatial propagation of wave-like behavior in the resting state time series and in 2011 coined the term quasi-periodic patterns (QPP) to describe whole brain networks that dominate much of the resting state signal. Recently, she and others have described three such patterns that account for most of the variance. Here we not only talk about her career but also delve into how these quasi-periodic patterns mesh with the current landscape of diverse features of resting state fMRI that continue to be found. She has shown that these patterns may have a central driver and may relate to such things as vasomotion, global signal, arousal state, and attention. In general, there is much more information from basic neurophysiology to cognition that remains to be derived from resting state fMRI, and Shella is among those leading the effort.

This was an incredibly stimulating and fun discission. We hope you enjoy it!

Episode producers:Omer Faruk Gulban

Jeff Mentch

Today, our guest is Dr. Andrew Jahn.

Those of you learning MRI and fMRI analysis - which realistically, should be pretty much all of us - may already know about the amazing resources that he is prodigiously producing online. Starting with "Andy's Brain Blog" in 2012, expanding to videos (over 300 of them), and now his current project, "Andy's Brain Book", Dr. Jahn has been steadily creating a standard and a go-to resource for all of us to learn the nuts and bolts as well as concepts and nuances of processing our data.

Dr. Jahn received his Bachelors in Psychology in 2008 from Carleton College, and his Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience at Indiana University in 2015. He did a postdoc at the Haskins Laboratories at Yale University, and is now a professor at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. There he has been given the freedom to expand his extremely valuable teaching resources.

In this podcast we discuss how he got started in this, how perhaps failing to get a post-undergraduate position at the NIH started him down this path. We discuss the educational resources that he has been producing, and how he draws upon luminaries from Jaque Barzun to Dave Berry for inspiration. We also discuss the wider issue of education in neuroimaging - what can be taught and what cannot and have an open-ended conversation on the future of neuroimaging as well as some of his own planned future projects.

This was a truly fun and enlightening discussion! We hope you enjoy it! 

Episode producers:

• Alfie Wearn
• Omer Faruk Gulban

Brain Art

• Artist: Laura Bundesen
• Title: Colors of hope

In this episode our guest is Dr. Russ Poldrack who has been so influential to the fields of fMRI, cognitive neuroscience, and brain imaging in general for the past 30+ years. Russ is the Albert Ray Lang Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and Director of the Center for Open and Reproducible Science. Over the years, he has helped elevate how we do fMRI by creating resources and standards for sharing data and code. He is also working to advance the precision with which we think about task design and data interpretation through his Cognitive Atlas project, which is a knowledge base for cognitive neuroscience.  

Russ Poldrack received his Bachelors in Psychology from Baylor University in 1989, and his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign in 1995. After a postdoc at Stanford, he started, in 1999, as an assistant professor at Harvard University and Mass General Hospital, in 2002 he moved to UCLA, then in 2009, he became the director of the imaging research center at the University of Texas at Austin. Finally, in 2014 he was recruited to Stanford, where he has been ever since. 

In this discussion, Peter and Russ look back into some of the paradigm shifts in fMRI best practices that Russ helped foster, as well as some of the big picture challenges that we face when using brain imaging, modeling, and precision task design to derive new insights into brain organization and mechanisms of computation. Here, Russ also weighs in on the prospects of fMRI for biomarker derivation and the exciting potential for single subject deep imaging. 

Peter mentioned to Russ that this was one of the fastest hours he has experienced in quite some time as it was an engrossing discussion.

Enjoy listening! 

Episode producers

Jeff Mentch

Omer Faruk Gulban

Brain Art

Artist: Mia Coutinho

Title: Represent, Connect, Empower

Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) 2023 live podcast session hosted by Alfie Wearn on site during the conference.

In this episode, our guests Ana Luísa Pinho, Enrico Amico, Tim Laumann, and Emily Finn discuss mapping individual differences in the human brain.

Enjoy listening!

Episode producers:

Alfie Wearn

Omer Faruk Gulban

Jeff Mentch

A brand new season of Neurosalience! This year production of podcast will be in the safe hands of Ömer Faruk Gülban.

Here, Faruk turns the microphone around onto our trusty host, Peter Bandettini, to talk about all Peter’s favorite moments of last season, some interesting updates about the ‘DIANA’ paper (discussed in Season 3 Episode 4), and future plans for your favorite brain mapping podcast.

Enjoy Season 4!

In the final episode of Season 3 of Neurosalience, Peter chats with Michele Thiebaut de Shotten. Michele is a full professor at the French National Center for Scientific Research in Paris where he heads the Brain Connectivity and Behavior Lab and the Neurofunctional Imaging Group. On top of all this he is Editor in Chief of the journal Brain Structure and Function and, this year, has been the President of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping.

Having over 15 years of experience in neuropsychology and brain connectivity neuroimaging, he has established himself as a leader in the field with work that spans everything including development, evolution, methodology, and theory. He has been a pioneer in probing brain connectivity and disconnectivity, starting in 2005 with a paper published in science showing that spatial neglect is a consequence of the disruption of communication between the frontal and the parietal lobes, and thus should be considered as a disconnection syndrome. Since then, he has been a highly prolific producer of creative, insightful, and high impact work exploring and characterizing structural and functional brain connectivity.

Here we talk about the development of his career and his ideas as well as the importance of thinking of the brain from a connectivity perspective. We delve into some of his recent papers, including one that highlights differences in various MRI methods to measure myelin, and finally, we discuss how OHBM has evolved along with the role of the president of OHBM, as well as a few things that the meeting has in store for this year.

Episode producers:

Omer Faruk Gulban

Alfie Wearn

Please send any feedback, guest suggestions, or ideas to ohbm.comcom@gmail.com

Thank you for listening to this season of Neurosalience! We'll be back in a few months time with Season 4!

This week on #Neurosalience we have two guests, Dr. Natalie Voets and Dr. Andreas Bartsch, who have both been working together to advance the use of fMRI as a complementary yet promising and important technique for guiding neurosurgery. Along with clinical researchers around the world, they have been writing a massive white paper for the OHBM Best Practices Committee on the presurgical mapping of language function. They were also both co-authors on a clear and comprehensive 2022 paper published in the British Journal of Neurosurgery, titled: “Functional MRI applications for intra-axial brain tumors: uses and nuances in surgical practice” 

Here we have an in-depth discussion of the state of the art of fMRI as it’s used in the context of Neurosurgery. While fMRI is becoming a more commonly used tool for helping inform surgeons of brain tissue to be avoided during surgery, standards and best practices are still being worked out as the technique itself has so many stages including acquisition, brain activation paradigm design, processing, and finally interpretation. Natalie and Andreas are not only trained in neuroimaging, but very much in the weeds of daily surgical practice, so have extremely useful insights on all aspects of how fMRI can be and should be used for pre-surgical mapping.

Dr. Bartsch is currently with Radiologie Bramber, and affiliated with the University of Heidelberg. He’s an MD/PhD Radiologist and Neuroradiologist who studied at Charite Hospital at the University of Berlin, Tufts University in Boston, as well as at the University of Oxford. 

Dr. Voets is an Associate Professor at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Oxford and a Special Advisor in Neuroimaging at Genesis Cancer Care. She is also an Intraoperative Awake Neurosurgery Technician at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Episode producers:

Omer Faruk Gulban

Jeff Mentch

Brain Art

Artist: Kai Kiwitz

Title: Mapping the Human Connectome

Description: Mapping the human connectome requires workflows that can deal with ever-increasing amounts of data. Here, the cellular architecture of the human cortex has been analyzed by a deep-learning based approach on a cell-body stained brain section. Visualizing what the approach has learned about the cellular architecture results in stunning images that illustrate the beauty of the human connectome.

This week on #Neurosalience, we discuss the recent editorial team resignations at NeuroImage over open access publishing charges and the start of the new journal Imaging Neuroscience. We have two of the senior editors of NeuroImage, Sonja Kotz from Mastricht University, and Shella Keilholz from Emory and Georgia Tech who give us a bit more insight into the factors leading up to the resignation, and what will be happening moving forward as the editors migrate from Elsevier to a non-profit company, MIT press.

Sonja Kotz and Shella Keilholz have been with NeuroImage for many years, and in this discussion, we also touch on the current publishing landscape, how that is changing as new platforms and non-profit companies emerge to help keep costs low, and the benefits to authors, readers, and science as a whole. We also discuss the extremely unique and special culture of editors of NeuroImage - now Imaging Neuroscience, and how this has been and will continue to be so fundamental to the quality of the journal over the years. Lastly, we discuss the future of publishing - from what will be published beyond just pdfs to the challenges of review and curation as more and more papers are produced. 

Episode producers:

Omer Faruk Gulban

Jeff Mentch

Brain Art

Artist: Sina Mansour

Title: Dreaming Connectomes

Description: Connectome images transformed using Deep dream AI

Please send any feedback, guest suggestions, or ideas to ohbm.comcom@gmail.com

Today our guest is Hiromasa Takemura, the 2022 OHBM Early Career Investigator Award winner! He is the 26th recipient of this prestigious award, joining a group of investigators who made an impact early in their career, and have continued to do so. Dr Takemura’s work has impacted the field mostly as it has traversed between tract tracing and basic systems neuroscience. In combining those two fields his impact has been enormous.

Dr Takemura is a professor in the Division of Sensory and Cognitive Brain Mapping in the Department of System Neuroscience and also a professor at the International Research for Collaboration Centre of the National Institutes of Natural Sciences and the National Institutes for Physiological Sciences in Okazaki Japan. He is the senior researcher at the Center for Information and Neural Networks (CiNet) and the Advanced ICT Research Institute at National institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), in Osaka, Japan.

In 2007 he received a B.A. in Liberal Arts from the University of Tokyo. Following this, in 2009 he received his M.A. in Multidisciplinary Studies also at the University of Tokyo. Finally, in 2012 he received his P.hD from the Department of Life Sciences at the University of Tokyo under his advisor Ikuya Murakami. From 2012-2015 he went to Stanford to work with Brian Wandell.

Episode producers:

Omer Faruk Gulban

Alfie Wearn

Brain Art

Artist: Marc Ramos

Title: Venus Brain

Please send any feedback, guest suggestions, or ideas to ohbm.comcom@gmail.com

Today our guest is Dr. Audrey Fan, Assistant Professor in the Departments of Neurology and Biomedical Engineering. She also serves as co-director of the Imaging Core for UC Davis Health's Alzheimer’s Disease Center, an NIH-funded Alzheimer’s research center.

Dr. Fan is an imaging physicist and translational scientist. She develops novel magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) methods to study brain physiology in cerebrovascular disease and vascular dementia. She has translated new imaging technologies to patient studies in acute stroke, Moyamoya disease and intracranial stenosis.

She received her Bachelor’s degree from Stanford, then her Ph.D. from the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. She returned to Stanford for her post-doctoral training, and, recently moved to UC Davis to start up her own lab.

Dr. Fan is one of only a handful of researchers who are wielding MRI to non-invasively extract, with ever more effectiveness, useful quantitative information about brain physiology that is also clinically relevant. This includes quantitative blood flow, volume, and oxygenation as well as cerebral metabolic rate and oxygen extraction fraction with a goal to help guide treatment and therapy for stroke, vascular dementia, and other neurovascular disorders. This is such an important area to work in - as MRI is so sensitive to so many physiologic variables with such a broad parameter space. Even at about 40 years old, MRI has untapped potential and clinical efficacy - which Audrey is working to utilize.

This conversation gives a great perspective of the unique challenges and opportunities of this exciting subfield of MRI.

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Episode producers:

Omer Faruk Gulban

Alfie Wearn

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Brain Art

Artist: Omer Faruk Gulban

Title: OHBM22 Brain Art

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Please send any feedback, guest suggestions, or ideas to ohbm.comcom@gmail.com

Today, our guest is Dr. Stephanie Forkel, a Donders Principal Investigator and Assistant Professor at Radboud University, studying the impact of neural variability on cognition in health and disease. In 2013, she received her PhD in neuroimaging at King's College in London where she helped establish an understanding that neurovariability is critical for prediction of recovery after stroke. Over her academic career she has continued to develop this line of work and has trained in many different places, including University of Salzburg, The National University of Ireland in Galway, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Klinikum Großhadern in Germany, University of Greenwich in the UK, UC Davis in the US, and CNRS in France. Dr. Forkel is a dynamic trailblazer, a thought leader, and a deeply engaged leader in both basic and clinical neuroimaging and she’s taken on many roles in the Organization for Human Brain Mapping. We hope you enjoy this week’s podcast. 

Episode producers:

Omer Faruk Gulban

Jeff Mentch

Brain Art

Artist: Vesna Prchkovska

Please send any feedback, guest suggestions, or ideas to ohbm.comcom@gmail.com