Seong-Gi Kim, PhD - Animal fMRI at the Circuit Level: Insights into Human fMRI Research

COEX 

BOLD fMRI has been widely used for human brain research. With the growing availability of high-field MRI systems and advancements in technology, achieving mesoscale resolution in fMRI is becoming increasingly feasible. To push the boundaries of our brain imaging research beyond traditional high-resolution activation mapping, determining causal relationships among activation sites is imperative.

To evaluate the feasibility of circuit-level mapping using fMRI, we conducted high-resolution fMRI in well-defined animal models at ultrahigh magnetic fields. Our investigations have focused on three main avenues: determining the neural correlates of cortical laminar-specific mapping, conducting sensory-evoked fMRI with and without neural manipulations at localized sites to assess information flow, and performing effective connectivity mapping by integrating neural activation and silencing. The implications of these circuit-level findings for human fMRI will be also discussed.