Seminars/Colloquia/Invited Talks

Seminars

Amir M. Tahmasebi

Quantification of Inter-Subject Variability in Human Brain and its Impact on Analysis of fMRI Data

PLACE:	Clark 314
EVENT:	CIS Seminar
DATE:	November 3, 2009
TIME:	1:00 - 2:00 PM

Abstract:

Inter-individual variability of the human brain has raised both admiration and frustration of cognitive neuroscientists. Their praise is due to the fact that such variability in cortical structures of the brain is the reason for uniqueness of individuals' personalities and cognitive capabilities. On the other hand, such variability also brings neuroscientists to the point of frustration by introducing enormous obstacles in functional neuroimagingstudies when trying to assign functional activation patterns to anatomical structures that could be generalized across population. Brain functional localization involves the employment of a series of geometrical and statistical operations on brain images to be able to localize brain activity maps with respect to the brain anatomy. The purpose of this talk is to provide an overview of the above techniques by highlighting the strengths and weak points of the proposed methodologies. Moreover, the capabilities of these techniques in analyzing a well-known yet-mysterious part of the human brain, the primary auditory cortex, located on Heschl's gyrus(HG), are examined. The result of our investigation is expected to lead to several novel developments in brain functional localization and mapping techniques that could improve the spatial precision with which function is mapped onto brain structure.

Brief Biography:

Amir M. Tahmasebi received his B.Sc. Degree in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, 2001, and his M.Sc. Degree in Computer Science from the School of Computing, Queen's University, Ontario, Canada. He is currently working on medical image registration, specifically on nonlinear registration and deformable atlases of human brain. His research explores the functional and structural organization of the human brain using neuroimaging techniques.