WEBINAR SERIES—Measuring Neuronal Activity and Vascular Physiology in the Human Brain Using High-resolution Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

December 6, 2023
11 a.m. EST

This webinar provides a deep dive into the physics and physiology of Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Key topics include:

• how fMRI measures brain function by tracking hemodynamic changes caused by active vascular responses to neuronal activity;
• current understanding of the spatial and temporal resolution of hemodynamics-based functional imaging methods such as fMRI;
• how vascular anatomy and physiology shape or influence the fMRI signals, and how to take this into account when analyzing and interpreting fMRI data;
• how explicit models of realistic vascular anatomy and dynamics can help infer underlying neuronal activity using fMRI; and
• how fMRI can be used to measure vascular dysfunction in neurological disease.

Speaker

Jonathan Polimeni, PhD
Associate Investigator/Assistant Professor of Radiology Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School

Jonathan Polimeni, PhD, is an associate investigator and neuroscientist and engineer at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School and director of ultrahigh-field imaging at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging in Boston and is affiliated faculty in the Division of Health Sciences and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge Massachusetts. His research focuses on studying the human brain using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Polimeni’s training was in computational neuroscience and neural modeling, electrical engineering, fMRI physics and ultra-high field MRI. He leads the High-Resolution and Ultra-High-Field Functional Imaging Laboratory, which focuses on developing new technologies for high-resolution fMRI in humans, to investigate the relationship between brain hemodynamics and neuronal activity, study the functional architecture of the human visual cortex and to apply these advanced tools for studying cerebrovascular physiology in health and disease.