Cognitive neuroscientists and clinicians seek insight into the distribution and temporal orchestration of human brain regions involved in cognitive processing. According to our general model and hypothesis, 'complex behavior is mapped at the level of multi-focal neural systems rather than specific anatomical sites, giving rise to brain-behavior relationships that are both localized and distributed' (Mesulam MM, Ann Neurol 28:597-613, 1990). Understanding how the human brain works requires knowledge of this functional neuroanatomy; namely, 'what' type of processing is performed, 'where' different processing areas are, 'when' temporal processing is organized between distributed areas, and 'how' large-scale distributed neuronal interactions underlying perception and cognition emerge. During the first 4 years of our funded research, we developed methodology combining functional MRI (fMRI) and magnetoencephalography / electroencephalography (MEG/EEG) data to obtain noninvasive spatiotemporal maps of cerebral activity with both high temporal (milliseconds) and spatial (millimeters) resolution, providing us with information about the 'what', 'where', and 'when'. This methodological development will be continued and extended in this grant application. ? ? Specifically, we will improve fMRI and MEG/EEG data acquisition and analysis methods, develop our finite element method to explicitly combine MEG and EEG data, and compare various inverse solution approaches, to increase the precision of the spatiotemporal brain imaging approach. Further, we will develop dynamic structural equation modeling approaches based on our integrated fMRI and MEG/EEG data, to allow us to study 'how' large-scale distributed neuronal interactions give rise to perception and cognition. Finally, we will apply these methodological advances in noninvasive studies of human visual system processing. Namely, we will study retinotopic organization, motion and complex stimuli processing, and the dynamic changes underlying plasticity and learning. Our work will provide a unique non-invasive methodology to map human brain function at a spatiotemporal resolution that has been previously attainable only in non-human animal models. Given the increasing availability of both MRI and EEG/MEG, our combined approach should have significant impact on human brain mapping in health and disease.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
2R01NS037462-05
Application #
6587221
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-SSS-X (21))
Program Officer
Babcock, Debra J
Project Start
1998-07-23
Project End
2007-03-31
Budget Start
2003-04-01
Budget End
2004-03-31
Support Year
5
Fiscal Year
2003
Total Cost
$765,674
Indirect Cost
Name
Massachusetts General Hospital
Department
Type
DUNS #
073130411
City
Boston
State
MA
Country
United States
Zip Code
02199
Gow Jr, David W; Ahlfors, Seppo P (2017) Tracking reorganization of large-scale effective connectivity in aphasia following right hemisphere stroke. Brain Lang 170:12-17
Ahveninen, Jyrki; Chang, Wei-Tang; Huang, Samantha et al. (2016) Intracortical depth analyses of frequency-sensitive regions of human auditory cortex using 7TfMRI. Neuroimage 143:116-127
Sun, Limin; Ahlfors, Seppo P; Hinrichs, Hermann (2016) Removing Cardiac Artefacts in Magnetoencephalography with Resampled Moving Average Subtraction. Brain Topogr 29:783-790
Meeren, Hanneke K M; Hadjikhani, Nouchine; Ahlfors, Seppo P et al. (2016) Early Preferential Responses to Fear Stimuli in Human Right Dorsal Visual Stream--A Meg Study. Sci Rep 6:24831
Jääskeläinen, Iiro P; Halme, Hanna-Leena; Agam, Yigal et al. (2016) Neural mechanisms supporting evaluation of others' errors in real-life like conditions. Sci Rep 6:18714
Ahveninen, Jyrki; Huang, Samantha; Ahlfors, Seppo P et al. (2016) Interacting parallel pathways associate sounds with visual identity in auditory cortices. Neuroimage 124:858-868
Ahlfors, Seppo P; Jones, Stephanie R; Ahveninen, Jyrki et al. (2015) Direction of magnetoencephalography sources associated with feedback and feedforward contributions in a visual object recognition task. Neurosci Lett 585:149-54
Chang, Wei-Tang; Jääskeläinen, Iiro P; Belliveau, John W et al. (2015) Combined MEG and EEG show reliable patterns of electromagnetic brain activity during natural viewing. Neuroimage 114:49-56
Ahlfors, Seppo P; Wreh 2nd, Christopher (2015) Modeling the effect of dendritic input location on MEG and EEG source dipoles. Med Biol Eng Comput 53:879-87
DeSalvo, Matthew N; Douw, Linda; Takaya, Shigetoshi et al. (2014) Task-dependent reorganization of functional connectivity networks during visual semantic decision making. Brain Behav 4:877-85

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