Resting-State Basics: why asking your subjects to do nothing can open a window into brain function, cerebral physiology, and data nuisance.
Stefano Moia1
1Maastricht University (UM), Netherlands

Synopsis

Keywords: Neuro: Brain function, Neuro: Brain connectivity, Neuro: Cerebrovascular

Resting state (RS) functional MRI is a versatile data acquisition paradigm that can be adopted to obtain meaningful information about brain function, cerebral physiology, and data nuisance.
This talk will introduce basics concepts of RS fMRI, starting by exploring the most common data-driven methods to analyse RS data, as well as the metrics used to assess its signal properties, discussing possible interpretations of the results. It will then address perks and pitfalls of RS, as well as the latest developments in the field of functional MRI aiming at overcoming the limitations of RS.

Outcome/Objectives

This talk aims at familiarising attendees with three concepts:
  1. When RS is an advantageous option for data acquisition, and how it can fall short,
  2. How resting state can be improved or enriched to overcome its fundamental issues,
  3. What (data-driven) methods are commonly used to analyse resting state data to explore brain function, cerebral physiology, or data nuisance.

Target audience

This talk is designed for researchers and clinicians that have limited or no prior familiarity with data driven analysis, or that want to become familiar with resting state functional MRI to explore functional connectivity and cerebral physiology, in particular in those cases when subject compliance is difficult to obtain or cannot be guaranteed.

Outline

  • What resting state is – and what it is not
  • The easy and the complicated aspects of acquiring and working with resting state data
  • Investigating data nuisance: how artefacts and noise can be informative
  • Physiological networks and cerebrovascular reactivity mapping without challenges
  • Improving resting state for physiological imaging
  • Useful signal metrics for data analysis: amplitude of low frequency fluctuations
  • Data-driven methods to investigate brain functions: independent component analysis
  • Surfacing brain activity: point-process analysis and co-activation patterns
  • Linking functional activations: static and dynamic functional connectivity
  • Enriched resting state data acquisition for functional imaging: subjects reports and naturalistic paradigms.

Acknowledgements

No acknowledgement found.

References

No reference found.
Proc. Intl. Soc. Mag. Reson. Med. 32 (2024)