Maryland Neuroimaging Center

Jonathan SimonBiology / Electrical & Computer Engineering

University of Maryland, College Park

Thanks to Luiz Pessoa for MNC slides

Maryland Neuroimaging Center

NSF grant by NACS faculty

3 Tesla Siemens MRI machine

Maryland Neuroimaging Center

Funds from the campus: $2-3 million• Broad support across several colleges

(BSOS, ENGR, CMNS, etc.)

Northeast of campus• Across route 193• Off Metzerott road

Maryland Neuroimaging Center

Multiple modalities for brain research• MRI• EEG: Electroencephalography (soon)• MEG: Magnetoencephalography (~ 1 year)

http://uuhsc.utah.edu/uumsi/images/sensor_array.jpg

http://ling.umd.edu/assets/photos/2011/06/07/KIT_MEG_350x350.jpeg

Research at the MNC Basic studies of perception,

cognition, and emotion Clinically relevant research

• Autism, Dyslexia, Anxiety, Addiction, etc.

Work with adults and children• Not yet with animals (only barrier is $$)

Functional MRI analysis Determine “activations” to task

conditions

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTu4yd12HA97oU222KOoUrVELjAE5kVdhVS_71JOAYq2woSjJGr

Region does X!e.g. , V1 “does” orientation processing

Sensory processing example

Ocular dominance columns• Because of the connectivity from eye to

cortex, eye-of-origin related columns exist in early visual cortex

Horton

Sensory processing example

Ocular dominance columns with fMRI• In-plane resolution:

470 x 470 µm• Column width: 1.1

mm

session 1

session 2

SA

Horton

Many other approaches… Machine learning to “decode” brain

statesWhat is the person seeing?

Many other approaches…

Graph-theoretic analysis• How are brain regions organized as a

function of condition, population (autism vs. control), etc.?

Nodes: brain regions

Edges: “functional connectivity” between regions• Correlation

Structural MRI data Reconstructing physical connection

paths

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/XaZAD5nhhH4/TVbUkY0aJjI/AAAAAAAAHis/dZXN82sE03o/s1600/Fiber_Tractography.JPG

http://www.epicareflorida.com/images/Hippocampal_sclerosis.jpg

Combining techniques Run the same experiment with

functional MRI and MEG Integrating the two modalities

• Spatial resolution of functional MRI• Temporal resolution of MEG

t = 32 ms t = 38 ms From Ou et al (2009)

New projects $600/hour Seed funding available

• Faculty• Students + Faculty• Idea is that pilot data will be used for grant

application to support research

Journal club Meets every other Friday from noon-1

• Focus on MRI, MEG, and EEG related work• Open to all techniques that study the brain!

Thanks Come visit sometime!

http://www.thecnnh.org/ACEC/images/jimmysmile_phan.jpg