2,085 research outputs found
Hemodynamically informed parcellation of cerebral FMRI data
Standard detection of evoked brain activity in functional MRI (fMRI) relies
on a fixed and known shape of the impulse response of the neurovascular
coupling, namely the hemodynamic response function (HRF). To cope with this
issue, the joint detection-estimation (JDE) framework has been proposed. This
formalism enables to estimate a HRF per region but for doing so, it assumes a
prior brain partition (or parcellation) regarding hemodynamic territories. This
partition has to be accurate enough to recover accurate HRF shapes but has also
to overcome the detection-estimation issue: the lack of hemodynamics
information in the non-active positions. An hemodynamically-based parcellation
method is proposed, consisting first of a feature extraction step, followed by
a Gaussian Mixture-based parcellation, which considers the injection of the
activation levels in the parcellation process, in order to overcome the
detection-estimation issue and find the underlying hemodynamics
HRF estimation improves sensitivity of fMRI encoding and decoding models
Extracting activation patterns from functional Magnetic Resonance Images
(fMRI) datasets remains challenging in rapid-event designs due to the inherent
delay of blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal. The general linear model
(GLM) allows to estimate the activation from a design matrix and a fixed
hemodynamic response function (HRF). However, the HRF is known to vary
substantially between subjects and brain regions. In this paper, we propose a
model for jointly estimating the hemodynamic response function (HRF) and the
activation patterns via a low-rank representation of task effects.This model is
based on the linearity assumption behind the GLM and can be computed using
standard gradient-based solvers. We use the activation patterns computed by our
model as input data for encoding and decoding studies and report performance
improvement in both settings.Comment: 3nd International Workshop on Pattern Recognition in NeuroImaging
(2013
Disentangling causal webs in the brain using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging: A review of current approaches
In the past two decades, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging has been used
to relate neuronal network activity to cognitive processing and behaviour.
Recently this approach has been augmented by algorithms that allow us to infer
causal links between component populations of neuronal networks. Multiple
inference procedures have been proposed to approach this research question but
so far, each method has limitations when it comes to establishing whole-brain
connectivity patterns. In this work, we discuss eight ways to infer causality
in fMRI research: Bayesian Nets, Dynamical Causal Modelling, Granger Causality,
Likelihood Ratios, LiNGAM, Patel's Tau, Structural Equation Modelling, and
Transfer Entropy. We finish with formulating some recommendations for the
future directions in this area
Fast joint detection-estimation of evoked brain activity in event-related fMRI using a variational approach
In standard clinical within-subject analyses of event-related fMRI data, two
steps are usually performed separately: detection of brain activity and
estimation of the hemodynamic response. Because these two steps are inherently
linked, we adopt the so-called region-based Joint Detection-Estimation (JDE)
framework that addresses this joint issue using a multivariate inference for
detection and estimation. JDE is built by making use of a regional bilinear
generative model of the BOLD response and constraining the parameter estimation
by physiological priors using temporal and spatial information in a Markovian
modeling. In contrast to previous works that use Markov Chain Monte Carlo
(MCMC) techniques to approximate the resulting intractable posterior
distribution, we recast the JDE into a missing data framework and derive a
Variational Expectation-Maximization (VEM) algorithm for its inference. A
variational approximation is used to approximate the Markovian model in the
unsupervised spatially adaptive JDE inference, which allows fine automatic
tuning of spatial regularisation parameters. It follows a new algorithm that
exhibits interesting properties compared to the previously used MCMC-based
approach. Experiments on artificial and real data show that VEM-JDE is robust
to model mis-specification and provides computational gain while maintaining
good performance in terms of activation detection and hemodynamic shape
recovery
Attention-dependent modulation of cortical taste circuits revealed by granger causality with signal-dependent noise
We show, for the first time, that in cortical areas, for example the insular, orbitofrontal, and lateral prefrontal cortex, there is signal-dependent noise in the fMRI blood-oxygen level dependent (BOLD) time series, with the variance of the noise increasing approximately linearly with the square of the signal. Classical Granger causal models are based on autoregressive models with time invariant covariance structure, and thus do not take this signal-dependent noise into account. To address this limitation, here we describe a Granger causal model with signal-dependent noise, and a novel, likelihood ratio test for causal inferences. We apply this approach to the data from an fMRI study to investigate the source of the top-down attentional control of taste intensity and taste pleasantness processing. The Granger causality with signal-dependent noise analysis reveals effects not identified by classical Granger causal analysis. In particular, there is a top-down effect from the posterior lateral prefrontal cortex to the insular taste cortex during attention to intensity but not to pleasantness, and there is a top-down effect from the anterior and posterior lateral prefrontal cortex to the orbitofrontal cortex during attention to pleasantness but not to intensity. In addition, there is stronger forward effective connectivity from the insular taste cortex to the orbitofrontal cortex during attention to pleasantness than during attention to intensity. These findings indicate the importance of explicitly modeling signal-dependent noise in functional neuroimaging, and reveal some of the processes involved in a biased activation theory of selective attention
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