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y David Mehler As we impatiently wait for the upcoming OHBM meeting in Rome, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the awesome experience from previous years. One aspect about OHBM that makes it so exciting and with which many will agree is that it lives from its vibrant community. Early Career Researchers (ECRs) play a big role in this and certainly have a lot to say and share with the community. At the last two meetings in Vancouver (2017) and Singapore (2018) we reached out to some of them to find out about their motivation to become neuroimagers and their vision for the field that they study.  Welcome our interviewee ECRs. Top row: Méadhbh Brosnan, Martin Hebart, James Kolasinski. Bottom row: Michael Lührs, Natalia Bielczyk, Martin Grund.
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by Christienne Gonzales Damatac & Roselyne Chauvin Roshan Cools is a Professor of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry and PI at the Donders Institute of Brain, Cognition and Behaviour. Following a PhD with Trevor Robbins in Cambridge University she completed a postdoc with Mark D’Esposito, before returning to Cambridge and eventually moving back to the Netherlands to start her own lab. Her work has resulted in multiple prestigious awards, including recognition from the James McDonnell foundations and the Royal Netherlands academy of Arts & Science. Here, we found out about her work on the effects of dopamine and serotonin on the brain and cognition and how she pushes for open science practices in her lab.  Professor Roshan Cools By Claude Bajada OHBM is a community of neuroscientists interested in neural cartography. It draws upon the traditions of 19th century neural mappers such as the Vogts, Brodmann and von Economo. While the spirit of the society is still based in the biological brain, the conference itself is multidisciplinary. Although still a place for biologists, anatomists, physicians and surgeons, thanks to the development of Magnetic Resonance Imaging the field has become increasingly computational. Thomas Yeo is an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore where he leads the Computational Brain Imaging Group. His lab develops machine learning algorithms for MRI data. His work is well known to brain imagers who are familiar with the “Yeo” brain networks. Ahead of his keynote lecture, I met Thomas and learned how he made the switch from engineering to neuroscience, what led him to working on the topics he is now well known for, and what the exciting new topics in his field are.  The Yeo lab 2019 GENES, ENVIRONMENT, THE DEVELOPING BRAIN, AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEENBy Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus One of the most interesting questions when researching the developing brain is the level of impact of defined genetic and environmental factors. Dr Armin Raznahan, a Neuroscientist and a child psychiatrist, who serves as Chief of the Developmental Neurogenomics Unit in the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), examines patterns of brain development in health and in groups with known neurogenetic disorders. His unique blending of basic and clinical neuroscience may help to identify risk pathways towards common psychiatric presentations, in addition to the insights it provides regarding the specific rare developmental disorder subtypes his clinical research protocols are focused on. I had the honor of interviewing Dr Raznahan, a keynote speaker in the upcoming OHBM 2019 conference, to find out more about his work.  Dr Armin Raznahan Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus (THK): What is developmental neurogenomics, and what motivated you to go into this area of research?
Armin Raznahan (AR): I see Developmental Neurogenomics as a discipline that is concerned with brain development, and emphasises the role of genetic factors in patterning brain structure and function over development. Usage of the term Developmental Neurogenomics has increased in recent years, and for us, there is an additional emphasis within what I’ve just described on thinking about how genetic influences on the developing brain can contribute to psychiatric disorders. Coming from the perspective of my initial training as a child psychiatrist, there is that clinical element to what I do as well as the basic science questions about spatiotemporal patterning of the brain over development, and how genetic variation can contribute to that. By Roselyne Chauvin Recently, a Brain-Art Special Interest Group (SIG) was created within OHBM. This SIG will be officially managing the Brain-Art competition and exhibits that have been organized for several years by the Neuro Bureau. Each year the Brain-Art competition receives numerous submissions; the winners of this competition are then announced during the Student and Postdoc SIG and Neuro Bureau collaborative social evening at the OHBM annual meeting. Since the first exhibition in 2011, Brain-Art exhibitions have always been a great success. I was really happy to learn about the creation of the Brain-Art SIG and curious about the aim and perspective of development of its board. By officializing a Brain-Art dedicated group, art might start to take a bigger place in the OHBM scene.  OHBM 2018 Brain-Art awards given during the Student-Postdoc SIG and Neuro Bureau social evening Peter Fox is a Professor of Neurology and has been a director of the Research Imaging Institute at the University of Texas Health Science Centre, San Antonio since 1991. He’s a co-founder of the journal Human Brain Mapping (with Jack Lancaster), a founding member of the International Consortium for Brain Mapping and has consistently been listed as one of the top 100 most cited neuroscientists since 2004. Peter Fox has played an integral role in the founding and development of OHBM, serving as Chair in 2004-05. We found out about his major academic achievements and experiences with OHBM.
By Shruti Vij & Nils Muhlert Functional MRI has been in use for over 25 years. Despite providing us with a breadth of methods developments and exciting findings about how the brain works, there has been a dearth of clinical applications. The OHBM Alpine Chapter has been keenly focussed on ways in which we can translate fMRI and other neuroimaging modalities to the clinic. Founded in 2014, the Alpine Chapter has provide a forum for like-minded brain mappers, both basic scientists and clinicians, throughout Austria, Switzerland, Germany and neighbouring countries to discuss new methods, new projects and to collaborate on programs of research. Here, Shruti Vij spoke to the past and current Chairs, Roland Beisteiner and Christoph Stippich respectively, to find out how the Chapter has developed and its directions for growth.
by Aina Puce & Bernard Mazoyer, OHBM Program Committee
In the late 1980’s, neuroimagers were a ragged band of multi-disciplinary researchers with no real home. In search of their scientific interests, they attended meetings covering radiology, nuclear medicine, neurophysiology, engineering, image processing and computer science. Starting in 1992, a small group of internationally well-known neuroimagers had attended a series of 8 annual BrainMap Workshops in San Antonio devoted to promoting the development of standard space as an analysis and reporting standard, with discussions also related to development of open-access neuroimaging archives. These meetings were organized by Peter Fox [USA] and funded by NIH [USA] R13 awards. After one such meeting in 1994, the crying need for a home of their own was the central issue discussed around a table of 25 scientists who became the driving force behind what would become OHBM. At the meeting, Dr. Bernard Mazoyer [France] volunteered to host a first launch of such an international conference, with a second meeting in Boston, USA to be held in 1996 and organized by Jack Belliveau and Bruce Rosen. The rest is history. Mazoyer and colleagues Per Roland [Sweden] and Rudiger Seitz [Germany] hosted the meeting in Paris, France in June 1995. Incredibly 820 attendees came to the first meeting – greatly exceeding the organizers’ expectations! The meeting consisted of talks and poster sessions. The inaugural Talairach keynote lecture was given by Dr Jean Talairach – the French neurosurgeon who pioneered the use of a standardized stereotactic grid system for neurosurgery. |
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