QLS Seminar Series - Ariel Rokem

Opportunities and challenges for studying human brain connections in the era of brain observatories.

Ariel Rokem (University of Washington)
Tuesday November 14, 12-1pm
Zoom Link: https://mcgill.zoom.us/j/86855481591
In Person: 550 Sherbrooke, Room 189

Abstract: Networks of brain regions and their joint activity give rise to coordinated information processing and to the complex adaptive behavior that characterizes human cognition. The proper function of brain networks is also crucial for neurological, cognitive, and psychiatric health. Therefore, a better understanding of brain networks is a major goal of contemporary neuroscience. In recent years, a new paradigm for studying brain connections has emerged, as large openly available datasets of human Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) measurements are being collected and released for broad use by the research community. Because of their large and diverse samples, these datasets present remarkable opportunities to harness data-driven methods, such as machine learning algorithms, to study the brain basis of individual differences: differences that emerge as children's brains develop and mature, differences that arise as individuals age, and differences between individuals with different cognitive abilities and different brain health conditions. However, these datasets also present unique challenges owing to their scale and complexity. In this talk. I will present a set of open-source software tools that we developed for scalable data-driven analysis of the tissue properties of brain connections in large MRI datasets. I will demonstrate their use in a study of early-life development of brain connections, in which we applied these tools to study a large publicly available dataset of infant MRI data, demonstrating that brain connection development dynamics undergo a substantial shift at the time of birth.