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Imaging Human Brain
Structure and Function
through MRI
Andrew Michael, PhD
“With nearly 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion connections, the human brain remains one of the greatest
mysteries in science and one of the greatest challenges in medicine. Neurological and psychiatric disorders,
such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, autism, epilepsy, schizophrenia, depression, and traumatic
brain injury, exact a tremendous toll on individuals, families, and society. Despite the many advances in
neuroscience in recent years, the underlying causes of most of neurological and psychiatric conditions remain
largely unknown, due to the vast complexity of the human brain. If we are ever to develop effective ways of
helping people suffering from these devastating conditions, researchers will first need a more complete
arsenal of tools and information for understanding how the brain functions both in health and disease”. –
President Obama’s BRAIN initiative, 2013
Over the last decade or so Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has become the primary tool
to in vivo image the human brain to construct theories about the underpinnings of its
function and dysfunction. This seminar will begin with brief introductions to basics of MRI,
structural MRI, functional MRI (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging and their image processing
pipelines. We will then focus on fMRI and some of the recent findings: spatially distributed
patterns of brain activation, resting state brain networks, the default mode network and
‘mind reading’. In addition functional brain networks obtained from fMRI data have helped us
to better understand brain disorders. Mathematical tools used to extract functional brain
networks will be discussed. We will conclude by discussing current limitations and future
directions of brain imaging.
3PM, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2015
Carlson Auditorium, Center for Imaging Science (CAR)