Abstract: Functional MRI, a unique capability of Magnetic Resonance Imaging that was discovered in the early 90's, has become an indispensable tool among neuroscientists and clinicians because of its ability to be used to non-invasively map human brain activation with a temporal resolution on the order of seconds and spatial resolution on the order of millimeters. The basis of fMRI contrast is brain activation induced hemodynamic changes, including blood flow, volume, and oxygenation. Blood oxygen dependent (BOLD) contrast is most used because it is most easily imaged and produces the strongest measured effect.

In this talk, I will trace the storied history of fMRI, outline the associated acquisition hardware components and their principles as well as the scanner pulse sequences. I will show the fundamentals of the signal changes, including many examples of both brain activation studies and studies of the "resting state" signal which is rich with information about brain connectivity. Lastly, I will describe the biggest challenges that the method and the entire field of fMRI face as work is ongoing towards increasing spatial and temporal resolution, sensitivity, and the depth and precision with which we can interpret the signal changes. Another challenge is to increase the clinical relevance of fMRI, moving it beyond a neuroscience research methods towards clinical adoption or diagnosis and treatment guidance of many neurologic and psychiatric disorders. Included in this talk will be a discussion on nearly 25 years of attempting to detect neuronal activity directly (bypassing the associated hemodynamic changes) with fMRI - a theoretical possibility but not yet convincingly demonstrated.

This talk aims to provide a balanced perspective of fMRI, including an understanding of the acquisition methods, the hemodynamic response, experimental strategies and related processing methods, and an appreciation that fMRI measures are exquisitely sensitive to changes in neuronal activity. A considerable effort in the field is being made to convert this sensitivity to insights about brain-behavior relationships. Functional MRI likely holds more surprises and exciting applications in the future.

Biography:

Dr. Peter Bandettini received his bachelor's degree in physics in 1989 at Marquette University. He received his Ph.D. in Biophysics at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) in 1994. His co-advisors were Drs. James Hyde and Scott Hinks. While in graduate school, he published two papers in Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. "Time course EPI of human brain function during task activation" first demonstrated fMRI, and "Processing strategies for time-course data sets in functional MRI of the human brain" introduced correlation analysis to fMRI.

From 1994 to 1996, Dr. Bandettini carried out his post-doctoral training under Drs. Jack Belliveau and Bruce Rosen at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. After briefly returning to MCW as an Assistant Professor, he moved to Bethesda, MD in 1999 to work at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) as a Principal Investigator and Director of the fMRI core facility. Recently he founded the Center for Multimodal Neuroimaging as well as the Machine Learning and Data Science and Sharing teams.

Dr. Bandettini has continuously worked to advance fMRI methodology and utility. His lab has developed multi-contrast fMRI sequences, explored MRI-based neuronal current effects, advanced event-related and naturalistic paradigms and processing approaches, established multivariate fMRI decoding methods, developed de-noising strategies, characterized dynamic functional connectivity, and most recently, mapped cortical layer-specific activity and connectivity. His current work is directed towards establishing fMRI as a method not only for deriving insight into human brain function but also as a clinical tool for individual assessment.

Dr. Bandettini has been fortunate to have highly gifted and motivated graduate students, post-docs, and staff scientists. He has fostered the talent in his lab through the encouragement of thinking in first principles, questioning assumptions, and confidently testing new ideas empirically. His trainees that have gone on to outstanding careers include Drs. Natalia Petridou, Prantik Kundu, Rasmus Birn, Ziad Saad, Kevin Murphy, Niko Kriegeskorte, and Laurentius Huber.

Dr. Bandettini has been engaged in the leadership of both the MRI and Brian Mapping communities. He was Editor-In-Chief of the NeuroImage from 2011 to 2017, president of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) from 2005 to 2006, and a member of the OHBM program committee for 14 years, which he chaired in 2002, 2011, and 2013. He also has served on the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) program and education committees from 2007 to 2010, and young investigator award committee from 2001 to 2002. He was elected ISMRM Fellow of the Society in 2015.

Dr. Bandettini has published over 180 papers and 24 book chapters, has co-edited one book, and has recently authored a book titled "fMRI." His work has been cited over 37,000 times, his h-index is 88, and he has presented over 400 lectures worldwide.