Abstract: 

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have been used to characterize local properties of behavior-related neural activity and to investigate regional associations in brain activity. fMRI is also useful for determining differences in distributed neural processing between subgroups, e.g. schizophrenia patients and healthy controls. fMRI studies produce massive data sets that pose challenges for the development and application of appropriate statistical methods. Data from fMRI studies consist of 3-D movies for each subject, contain a large number of spatial locations (voxels) within each scan, and exhibit complex patterns of spatial and temporal correlations. In this talk, we develop Bayesian modeling procedures that capture aspects of the spatial correlations between brain locations and temporal correlations between repeated measures on each subject. Incorporating these correlations borrows strength across distinct, but functionally related, brain locations and yields increased estimation precision. Our methods provide a unified framework for the distinct objectives of detecting localized alterations in brain activity and determining associations between different brain regions, and they can also be used for prediction. We demonstrate the applicability of our model approaches using data from psychiatric and neurological disorders.

Speaker

A/Prof DuBois Bowman

Research Area
Affiliation

Emory University (Atlanta, USA)

Date

Fri, 05/04/2013 - 4:00pm to 5:00pm

Venue

OMB-145, Old Main Building, UNSW Kensington Campus