The fMRI Project

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a method using nuclear magnetic resonance to render images of the inside of an object. E.g. MRI is widely used to take pictures from human brain. Every image shows one layer of the brain.

Traditionally MRI distinguishes between different types of tissue. But as we are interessted in the dynamics of brain activity, we mesure the so called blood oxygen level dependend (BOLD) signal. This measurement is called functional MRI (fMRI).

The BOLD signal thereby is a consequence of the fact that the magnetic feature of oxygenised blood differs from that of unoxygenised. If a cluster of neurons is active more oxygen is metabolised and the oxygen level in the surrounding tissue is affected. This effect can be registered by fMRI.

After some preprocessing of the fMRI data we extract timeseries from every region of interest. Drawing information out of these timeseries leads to the field of multivariate time series analysis.

Aim of the project

The long-term goal is to be able to reliably reveal the functional connections in the human brain regions that are involved in certain tasks. For this investigations well-established methods as well as new approaches are beeing tested and compared.

The Team

1. Prof. Dr. Jens Timmer (Freiburg Center for Data Analysis and Modeling, Freiburg, Germany)
2. Dr. Bjoern Schelter (Freiburg Center for Data Analysis and Modeling, Freiburg, Germany)
3. Wolfgang Mader (Freiburg Center for Data Analysis and Modeling, Freiburg, Germany)
4. Benjamin Seeber (Freiburg Center for Data Analysis and Modeling, Freiburg, Germany)
5.  
6. Dr. Rüdiger Lange (Department of Neurology, University Medical Center Freiburg, Germany)
7. Dr. Dorothee Saur (Department of Neurology, University Medical Center Freiburg, Germany)
8. Volkmar Glauche (Department of Neurology, University Medical Center Freiburg, Germany)