My research uses combinations of non-invasive imaging techniques to study human brain function.
By using combinations of techniques we can get more information than you can by using
just one technique on its own.
One of those techniques is functional magnetic resonance imaging, or FMRI, which uses a scanner
much like the one behind me.
FMRI allows researchers to pinpoint the brain activity with really fine spatial resolution
down to a couple of millimetres so you can localise the areas of the brain that are responsible
for movements of the body for what we see, for what we hear, for what we feel, for making
decisions, and also the areas that are responsible for human emotions and how we experience things
such as pain, fear and anxiety.
So it's a really useful technique but the origins of the technique, it's physiological
origins, are slightly unknown and not very fully understood.
FMRI is only an indirect measurement of brain activity, it doesn't measure the activity
of brain cells called neurons directly, it records them through an indirect change in
blood flow, blood oxygenation and blood volume.
In some circumstances it's possible to get a change in FMRI signal which only reflects
changes in flow and oxygenation and doesn't reflect the underlying neuronal activity.
So my research combines FMRI measurements with other techniques to try to get a better
understanding of all the different factors which add into the signal.
One technique we use a lot is a simultaneous recording of electro—encephalography, or
EG, which measures neuronal activity directly.
This is done by placing some electrodes on the scalp and you can record the electric
field patterns that you get from the brain and by combining EG with FMRI and also measurements
of cerebral blood flow we get a much more detailed understanding of the physiological
origins of the signal and what it really means in terms of the underlying changes in brain
patterns.
Towards the end of my undergraduate physics degree I realised that I wanted a career in
science research and in particular in applying my technical skills to problems in biology
I found the application side of research most interesting.
I was lucky enough to get onto a doctoral training course at the University of Oxford
where they specialised in taking people like myself with technical skills and training
them to apply those into problems in life sciences, in particular with biology and medical
problems.
I quickly got interested in neuroscience because I find the myriad functions of the brain fascinating
and trying to understand how its complexity gives rise to the basic functions that we
use every day.
My research of combining imaging techniques and also we're trying to build in mathematical
models of different neuronal populations gives us the potential to extract a lot more information
a lot more robustly from these measurements.
Hopefully in time this will extend the utility of FMRI measurements, extend the contexts
in which it can be experimentally applied, it can maybe reduce scan times.
Another thing we're looking at is the ability to study or extract parameters of brain function
from simple resting state scans where you obtain measurements of the activity of neuronal
networks without any external stimulation.
This is particularly advantageous because it's widely applicable and very comparable
across many different contexts and the ability to extract meaningful parameters of brain
function and network function from resting state scans is a very exciting potential for
diagnosing differences perhaps in types of clinical populations.
Science is always built up from little small incremental advances but knowing that one
day your research might add up to making a difference to somebody's life or to the way
we treat a diagnosed diseased is a great motivation to get up in the morning.