Functional neuroimaging is the use of neuroimaging technology to measure an aspect of brain function, often with a view to understanding the relationship between activity in certain brain areas and specific mental functions. It is primarily used as a research tool in cognitive neuroscience, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and social neuroscience.
Analysis of Functional NeuroImages (AFNI) is an open-source environment for processing and displaying functional MRI data—a technique for mapping human brain activity.
Neuroinformatics is the field that combines informatics and neuroscience. Neuroinformatics is related with neuroscience data and information processing by artificial neural networks. There are three main directions where neuroinformatics has to be applied:
Talairach coordinates, also known as Talairach space, is a 3-dimensional coordinate system of the human brain, which is used to map the location of brain structures independent from individual differences in the size and overall shape of the brain. It is still common to use Talairach coordinates in functional brain imaging studies and to target transcranial stimulation of brain regions. However, alternative methods such as the MNI Coordinate System have largely replaced Talairach for stereotaxy and other procedures.
The Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) is an organization of scientists with the main aim of organizing an annual meeting.
The International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility is an international non-profit organization with the mission to develop, evaluate, and endorse standards and best practices that embrace the principles of Open, FAIR, and Citable neuroscience. INCF also provides training on how standards and best practices facilitate reproducibility and enables the publishing of the entirety of research output, including data and code. INCF was established in 2005 by recommendations of the Global Science Forum working group of the OECD. The INCF is hosted by the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. The INCF network comprises institutions, organizations, companies, and individuals active in neuroinformatics, neuroscience, data science, technology, and science policy and publishing. The Network is organized in governing bodies and working groups which coordinate various categories of global neuroinformatics activities that guide and oversee the development and endorsement of standards and best practices, as well as provide training on how standards and best practices facilitate reproducibility and enables the publishing of the entirety of research output, including data and code. The current Directors are Mathew Abrams and Helena Ledmyr, and the Governing Board Chair is Maryann Martone
Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) is a multisite study that aims to improve clinical trials for the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This cooperative study combines expertise and funding from the private and public sector to study subjects with AD, as well as those who may develop AD and controls with no signs of cognitive impairment. Researchers at 63 sites in the US and Canada track the progression of AD in the human brain with neuroimaging, biochemical, and genetic biological markers. This knowledge helps to find better clinical trials for the prevention and treatment of AD. ADNI has made a global impact, firstly by developing a set of standardized protocols to allow the comparison of results from multiple centers, and secondly by its data-sharing policy which makes available all at the data without embargo to qualified researchers worldwide. To date, over 1000 scientific publications have used ADNI data. A number of other initiatives related to AD and other diseases have been designed and implemented using ADNI as a model. ADNI has been running since 2004 and is currently funded until 2021.
The Human Connectome Project (HCP) is a five-year project sponsored by sixteen components of the National Institutes of Health, split between two consortia of research institutions. The project was launched in July 2009 as the first of three Grand Challenges of the NIH's Blueprint for Neuroscience Research. On September 15, 2010, the NIH announced that it would award two grants: $30 million over five years to a consortium led by Washington University in Saint Louis and the University of Minnesota, with strong contributions from Oxford University (FMRIB) and $8.5 million over three years to a consortium led by Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of California Los Angeles.
Anders Martin Dale is a prominent neuroscientist and Professor of Radiology, Neurosciences, Psychiatry, and Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and is one of the world's leading developers of sophisticated computational neuroimaging techniques. He is the founding Director of the Center for Multimodal Imaging Genetics (CMIG) at UCSD.
Resting state fMRI is a method of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that is used in brain mapping to evaluate regional interactions that occur in a resting or task-negative state, when an explicit task is not being performed. A number of resting-state conditions are identified in the brain, one of which is the default mode network. These resting brain state conditions are observed through changes in blood flow in the brain which creates what is referred to as a blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) signal that can be measured using fMRI.
Dynamic functional connectivity (DFC) refers to the observed phenomenon that functional connectivity changes over a short time. Dynamic functional connectivity is a recent expansion on traditional functional connectivity analysis which typically assumes that functional networks are static in time. DFC is related to a variety of different neurological disorders, and has been suggested to be a more accurate representation of functional brain networks. The primary tool for analyzing DFC is fMRI, but DFC has also been observed with several other mediums. DFC is a recent development within the field of functional neuroimaging whose discovery was motivated by the observation of temporal variability in the rising field of steady state connectivity research.
Randy L. Buckner is an American neuroscientist and psychologist whose research focuses on understanding how large-scale brain circuits support mental function and how dysfunction arises in illness.
Russell "Russ" Alan Poldrack is an American psychologist and neuroscientist. He is a professor of Psychology at Stanford University, Associate Director of Stanford Data Science, member of the Stanford Neuroscience Institute and director of the Stanford Center for Reproducible Neuroscience and the SDS Center for Open and Reproducible Science.
The Brain Imaging Data Structure (BIDS) is a standard for organizing, annotating, and describing data collected during neuroimaging experiments. It is based on a formalized file/folder structure and JSON based metadata files with controlled vocabulary. This standard has been adopted by a multitude of labs around the world as well as databases such as OpenNeuro, SchizConnect, Developing Human Connectome Project, and FCP-INDI, and is seeing uptake in an increasing number of studies.
Dynamic causal modeling (DCM) is a framework for specifying models, fitting them to data and comparing their evidence using Bayesian model comparison. It uses nonlinear state-space models in continuous time, specified using stochastic or ordinary differential equations. DCM was initially developed for testing hypotheses about neural dynamics. In this setting, differential equations describe the interaction of neural populations, which directly or indirectly give rise to functional neuroimaging data e.g., functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), magnetoencephalography (MEG) or electroencephalography (EEG). Parameters in these models quantify the directed influences or effective connectivity among neuronal populations, which are estimated from the data using Bayesian statistical methods.
NeuroVault is an open-science neuroinformatics online repository of brain statistical maps atlases and parcellations.
The OHBM Replication Award is an award presented annually by the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM). It is presented to a researcher in recognition of conducting and disseminating the results of a neuroimaging replication study of exceptional quality and impact.
