Por Patrícia Figueiredo (Department of Bioengineering, Instituto Superior Técnico).

Our understanding of the human brain has been drastically transformed in the past two decades with the discovery of a large-scale organisation into functionally interconnected networks exhibiting rich spatiotemporal dynamics. The workhorse for the study of brain function has been functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures neuronal activity indirectly based on neurovascular mechanisms driving blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signals. Because of their vascular nature, these are also highly susceptible to contributions from non-neuronal physiology, and disentangling neurovascular from purely vascular origins remains one of the greatest challenges in fMRI studies. In this talk, I will present work we have developed to measure both neuronal and non-neuronal physiology using fMRI, and show how these measurements may provide sensitive biomarkers of different brain disorders.

Short bio: P. Figueiredo is Associate Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Universidade de Lisboa, and principal investigator at the Biomedical Engineering Lab (LaSEEB) of the Instituto for Systems and Robotics - Lisboa. After graduating in Physics Engineering from IST, I obtained the DPhil in Neuroimaging from the University of Oxford, and have recently been conferred Habilitation in Biomedical Engineering by IST. My research is focused on imaging human brain function noninvasively using MRI, and its combination with EEG, with applications in basic neuroscience as well as various nmeuro0logical and psychiatric disorders.