OHBM Neurosalience OHBM

A conversation with 2024 Keynote Lecture presenter Luis Concha



https://www.ohbm-com.com/blog/a-conversation-with-keynote-speaker-luis-concha



Interviewers:

- Eduardo A. Garza-Villarreal

- Diana Giraldo

Today our guest is Dr. Vince Calhoun, who's also a longtime colleague and friend of Peter Bandettini. Vince is the founding director of the tri-institutional center for translational research in Neuroimaging and Data Science (TReNDS) which is a consortium formed by Georgia State University, Georgia Tech, and Emory University.



Vince Received his BS in electrical engineering from the University of Kansas, in 1991, two masters degrees in Biomedical engineering and information systems from Johns Hopkins in 1993, and 1996, and his Ph.D. in EE from the University of Maryland Baltimore County in 2002. After four years at Yale University, he became President of the Mind Research Network and Distinguished Professor at the University of New Mexico, before he moved to Atlanta for his present position several years ago.



Vince's focus over the years could be summarized as using fMRI and other neuroimaging methods while developing processing methods to extract every possible useful bit of information. He's been prodigiously engaged and productive for over 20 years advancing multi-modal brain imaging, data fusion, and machine learning. His work has inspired new ways of looking at the data.



In this discussion, Peter and Vince talk about work, professional journey from the east coast to New Mexico and now to Atlanta, as well as his successful battle with cancer in about 2010. We hope you enjoy this episode.



Episode producers:

Xuqian Michelle Li

Johanna Bayer

Omer Faruk Gulban

A conversation with 2024 Keynote Lecture presenter Mac Shine

https://www.ohbm-com.com/blog/a-conversation-with-dr-mac-shine-ohbm-2024-keynote-interview-series-pt3

Interviewers:
- Alfie Wearn
- Xuqian Michelle Li

A conversation with 2024 Talairach Lecture presenter Zarin Machanda



https://www.ohbm-com.com/blog/a-conversation-with-2024-talairach-lecture-presenter-zarin-machanda


Interviewers:
- Elisa Guma
- Lavinia Uscatescu

Today we zoom in on Vancouver British Columbia to interview Dr. Todd Woodward, who is a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia and director of the UBC Brain Dynamics Laboratory. He's also the Director of the Cognitive Neuroscience of Schizophrenia Laboratory at BC Mental Health and Addictions Research Institute in Vancouver.

Dr. Woodward received his Ph.D. in Experimental Neuropsychology at the University of Victoria in 1999, and performed his post-doc in the department of psychology at UBC. Since 2003 he's moved up from research scientist to professor - all at the University of British Columbia. 

He's been working at the interface of processing methods and well-crafted experimental designs to probe the networks that may be disrupted in schizophrenia and other disorders. He and his team developed almost two decades ago a unique and elegant method known as constrained principal component analysis ( or CPCA), which he has been applying successfully with many different tasks.

He's also deeply interested in novel non-pharmaceutical interventions that help augment schizophrenia treatment - having developed a program called metacognitive training (MCT), which may allow those with schizophrenia to be able to step back and begin to assess their own beliefs.

This was such a wide ranging conversation which delved into the nuts and bolts of CPCA as well as the potential future role that neuroimaging can play in better understanding and ultimately treating schizophrenia. We hope you enjoy this episode.



Episode producers:

Omer Faruk Gulban

Xuqian Michelle Li

This episode’s guest is arguably one of the most influential scientists in the human brain mapping community. Dr. Peter Fox, director of the Research Imaging Institute at the University of Texas Health, San Antonio. Early in his career he wrote the seminal paper that showed, using positron emission tomography , that brain-activation related increases in blood flow are accompanied by only small increases in oxidative metabolic -  resulting in the blood locally increasing in oxygenation. This paper set the foundation for understanding all of Blood Oxygen Level Dependent Contrast used in fMRI today. The true purpose of activation-related flow increases is still an open question. The story of the events and details surrounding this are in his review article from the 2012 NeuroImage special issue. It's titled, simply "The coupling controversy."

Dr. Fox was also among the first to promote data sharing and pooling with his brainmap database, and early on, established stereotactic coordinates and spatial normalization as a way to put data into a shareable space. He started the annual meeting that pre-dated the Organization for Human Brain Mapping, and also founded one of the major brain mapping journals today, titled: Human Brain Mapping.

 

Peter had his formative undergraduate education at the extremely unique St. Johns college in Annapolis. He received his MD from Georgetown University, interned at Duke University, then carried out his residency and fellowship at Washington University where he worked closely with Dr. Mark Raichle, who was at the time pioneering PET scanning.

 

In this discussion, we delve into his contributions in a wide range of topics, from neurovascular coupling to the challenge of spatial normalization - particularly at high resolution - to subject variability, to clinical applications and the ongoing evolution of scientific publishing. Lots of history, content, and insight here. We hope you enjoy it!



Notable paper:

Fox PT., The Coupling Controversy, Neuroimage. 2012 Aug 15; 62(2): 594–601. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4019339/



Episode producers:

Omer Faruk Gulban

Stephania Assimopoulos