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Incorporating Spatial Frequency Patterns in fMRI Analysis: Multidimensional Spectral Approach…....

Robyn Miller, Ph.D.- Research Scientist at the Mind Research Network

Presented: August 25, 2015

ABSTRACT: A great deal of clinical fMRI research focuses on the temporal behavior of gray matter regions (ROIs) or distributed networks whose roles in brain function are somewhat well understood. The work I will report here addresses a deep question about activated brain space in resting fMRI that is rarely investigate directly: Are the broad spatiotemporal organizing principles of brains in certain populations distinguishable from those of others?  To date, very little work in the fMRI community has been explicitly aimed at capturing features of whole brain spatiotemporal activation that might characterize complex psychiatric conditions, aging processes or gender—among other variables of potential interest to researchers.  In this talk I will discuss a canonical, transparent technique for investigating the role in overall brain activation of spatially scaled periodic patterns with given temporal recurrence rates.  Recent analyses employing this technique have revealed striking differences in the spatiotemporal organization of brain activity associated with diagnosed schizophrenia, as well as with gender, age and even cerebral hemisphere. To the best of our knowledge, these results constitute the first demonstrations that a 4D frequency domain analysis of full volume fMRI data can expose clinically or demographically relevant differences in resting-state brain function.

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