EFFECTIVE CONNECTIVITY IN BRAIN NETWORKS: Discovering Latent Structure, Network Complexity and Recurrence.

A longstanding goal of neuroscience has been matching specific functions to local brain structure and neural activity. Despite success in identifying brain areas associated with cognitive tasks such as memory, attention, and language, many areas engaged during cognitive tasks are often considered “secondary” and are consequently ignored. One weakness in current methods to associate brain regions with specific functions has been the reliance on direct correlation between increased neural activity and task performance. To identify and assess how secondary areas contribute to important cognitive tasks, Hanson and his colleagues plan to extend IMaGES and develop new functional brain imaging analysis software to search for brain areas with less intuitive, but still relevant, connections to certain tasks. This project will advance efforts to analyze information flow in the brain and determine how neural pathways are altered in both health and disease.