2024 CCBBI Archives
February 2
Dr. Michael Cole
Associate Professor, Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, Rutgers University-Newark
Brain Network Flows and the Generation of Cognitive Abstractions
Abstract: From navigating a new city to learning new tasks, human brains must utilize a wide variety of representations to accomplish their goals. Understanding the origin and coordination of these representations will require determining how such task-relevant information is generated by brain network interactions. I will share recent insights into these processes gained via activity flow modeling – an approach for creating neural network simulations uniquely tied to empirical brain data. This involves using empirical brain connectivity data to build computational models that generate task-evoked brain activity. Investigating the resulting model yields insights into the processes in the brain that generate that activity. The key construct bridging data and modeling is activity flow – the movement of neural activity over brain connections – which is key to computation in neural network models and is known to occur in real brains. I will share results that use the (open source) Brain Activity Flow Toolbox (https://colelab.github.io/ActflowToolbox/) to identify brain network processes underlying the generation of visual categories (e.g., faces; see Figure), highly abstract cognition (e.g., rules), and motor responses (behavior). This approach is also applied to understand the brain network processes underlying aberrant cognition in brain disorders such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease. Together these findings demonstrate the utility of the activity flow mapping framework for discovering the network processes generating (healthy and unhealthy) cognition in the human brain, ultimately supporting the hypothesis that neural functions are generated (computed) by distributed activity flow processes that are specified primarily by connectivity patterns.
Watch Dr. Cole's seminar
March 1, 2024
Dr. Luiz Pessoa
Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, and Director of the Maryland Neuroimaging Center
Title: The entangled brain: the integration of emotion, motivation, and cognition
Abstract: Research on the “emotional brain” often focuses on particular structures, such as the amygdala and the ventral striatum. In this presentation, I will discuss research that embraces a distributed view of both emotion- and motivation-related processing, as well as efforts to unravel the impact of emotion and motivation across large-scale cortical-subcortical brain networks. In the framework presented, emotion and motivation have broad effects on brain and behavior, leading to the idea of the “entangled brain” where brain parts dynamically assemble into coalitions that support complex cognitive-emotional behaviors. According to this view, it is argued that decomposing brain and behavior in terms of standard mental categories (perception, cognition, emotion, etc.) is counterproductive.
Watch Dr. Pessoa's seminar
April 5, 2024
Dr. Kate Webb
Assistant Neuroscientist, McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School
The biological embedding of socioenvironmental factors and relevance to PTSD
Abstract: Of the nearly 24 million Americans who experience a traumatic event each year, a subset will develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a debilitating condition with significant psychological, financial, and social consequences. Interventions administered in the early aftermath of the trauma can help stave off symptom development; however, identifying those at risk for PTSD and who would benefit from acute treatment is limited by both symptom heterogeneity and the complex interplay between biological and socioenvironmental factors. The present talk will highlight how socioenvironmental risk (e.g., neighborhood disadvantage) and resilience (e.g., residential greenspace) factors may impact PTSD susceptibility in recent trauma survivors. Recent evidence using multimodal MRI and genetics suggesting these factors alter how biomarkers of PTSD perform across sociodemographic groups will also be reviewed. Finally, future directions for research as well as interventions aimed at mitigating the impact of traumatic stress will be discussed.
October 4, 2024
Dr. Leyla Isik
Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor, Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University
The neural basis of seeing social interactions
Abstract: Humans see the world in rich social detail. We effortlessly recognize not only objects and people in our environment, but also social interactions between people. This ability to perceive and understand others’ interactions is critical to function in our social world, yet the underlying neural computations remain poorly understood. In this talk, I will first review evidence from our lab and others showing that social interactions are processed selectively in the human superior temporal sulcus (STS), in regions that are largely distinct from the theory of mind network. This selectivity is observed in both controlled stimuli and even natural movies, where social interactions and mentalization are constantly co-varying. Next, I will present new research using a largescale, naturalistic video dataset and condition-rich fMRI experiment, demonstrating that social interaction information is extracted hierarchically by the visual system along the recently proposed lateral visual pathway. Finally, I will explore the computational implications of visual social interaction processing and introduce a novel graph neural network model, SocialGNN that instantiates these insights. Together, this work suggests that social interaction recognition is a core human ability that relies on specialized, structured visual representations.
Watch Dr. Isik's seminar
November 1, 2024
Dr. Randy McIntosh
BC Leadership Chair in Neuroscience and Technology Transfer Across the Lifespan and Director of the Institute for Neuroscience and Neurotechnology
Simon Fraser University.
Using The Virtual Brain to trace trajectories of brain health in ageing
Abstract: We introduced TheVirtualBrain (TVB) to the neuroscience community a decade ago. It was the first platform for creating large-scale simulations of human brain networks and has continued to evolve as a community project, extending to multiple basic and clinical applications and extensions to models of rodent and macaque brains. A singular feature of TVB is that the brain models can be constructed from an individual’s neuroimaging data, giving a great degree of specificity. This is especially relevant in studies across the lifespan, where the biophysical parameters of the model have a direct neurophysiological interpretation (e.g., neural excitation/inhibition). This feature of TVB results in great prediction of cognitive function across age-groups, and by connecting potential trajectories between groups, may provide new information on paths that reflect good brain health. We can extend this to age-related dysfunction, such as dementia, opening a potential for early detection of problematic trajectories and developing mitigation strategies.
November 8, 2024
CCBBI TMS Workshop
The morning session (9:00 am - 12:00 pm) is dedicated to hands-on training in TMS related to motor threshold testing and will be led by Dr. Adam Gorka and Dr. Nicholas Balderston. Participation in the morning session will be limited to 20.
The afternoon session (1:30pm - 5:00pm) is dedicated to lectures on the use of TMS in cognitive neuroscience and clinical research. This session will be held in PS35 and is open to the broader CCBBI community.
Dr. Xiangrui Li
Assistant Director, CCBBI, Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University
TMS Principles and Mechanisms
Dr. Kevin Reeves
Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, The Ohio State University
TMS Safety and Tolerability
Dr. Anya Benitez
Clinical Neuropsychologist, College of Medicine, Medical University of South Carolina
Clinical Research Applications of TMS
Dr. Nicholas Balderston
Assistant Professor Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania