The UMBC CSEE Seminar Series Presents
Technical challenges and opportunities
in studying the brain’s network activity
Dr. Hanbing Lu
National Institute of Drug Abuse, NIH
12:00-1:00pm, Friday 25 September 2015, ITE 325b
Brain structures do not work in isolation; they work in concert to produce sensory perception, motivation and behavior. Recent advances in fMRI technology offer the opportunity to investigate brain’s network activity. Data are accumulated suggesting that dysregulations within and between network activity are implicated in a number of neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease and drug addiction. Despite wide application of this approach in systems neuroscience, the fundamentals of brain network activity remain poorly understood. Animal models permit invasive manipulations and are uniquely advantageous in this regard. In this talk, Dr. Lu will discuss technical challenges and opportunities in studying brain networks by integrating multiple modalities, including MRI, electrophysiological recording, optical and electromagnetic neural modulation.
Dr. Hanbing Lu received his doctorate training in Biophysics at the Medical College of Wisconsin, during which he developed hardware and imaging sequence for functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in rodents. He is currently a staff scientist in the Neuroimaging Research Branch, National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH. Dr. Lu pioneered animal models to investigate brain’s large scale networks. Current efforts include integrating multiple modalities to better understand the neurobiology of brain’s network activity
Hosts: Professors Fow-Sen Choa () and Alan T. Sherman ()