Initial Chat with Bec my words😊HAROLD- Hemispheric asymmetry reduction

Discussion point- for further research is it indicating neural activity or just blood flow

Could it be blood flow that makes the changes and not brain activity?.

Factors leading to differences between men n women Menopause-?

Is brain symmetry different between men and women in the aging brain? We know of this change in
an aging brain, but not between men and women, this is the gap in the literature. And our study will
fill this gap by analyzing the differences between men and women in an aging brain. Based on the
well-developed Theory HAROLD.

Then we can do a simple regression to analysis if there is a correlation between a reduction in

Lit review on what fMRI is, how it works, pros and cons. fMRI agiing. FSL.

Exact notes from Hopkins university videos- not paraphrased.

fMRI- Non- invasive technique for studying brain activity ( no side effects to having scans).

During fmri experiment a series of brain images are required while a subject performs a set of tasks.

Changes in the measured signal between the individual images are used to make inferences
regarding task-related activations in the brain.

E.g finger tap for 26seconds, rest for 26seconds. Look for differences between activation and rest
states.

Its functional it is measured continually over time, so you measure the same brain volume multiple
times across time.

Each of these brain volumes have 100 thousand different Voxels (cubic volumes that span the 3D
dimensional space of the brain).

Voxel- each video corresponds to a spatial location and it has a number of associated with it that
represents it is intensity.

fMRI data, during the course of an experiment several 100 of these images are required approx. one
every 2 seconds.

We can also extract info from a single voxel (represents a spatial location) and track intensity over
time which gives us a time series, if that exact voxel and spatial location, and we can see whtheer
there is something in that time series that’s related to the task that was performed.

100,000 different time series we are studying and looking for task related behaviour.

What does the signal mean that we get this time series mean?

Most common approach to BOLD fMRI.

BOLD measures the ratio of oxygenated versus deoxygenated hemoglobin in the blood. It doesn’t
measure neural activity directly. Instead, it measures the metabolic demands/ oxygen consumption
of active neurons. When neurons are active they only need access to oxygen to replenish there
energy. And it’s the oxygen consumption that we see so it’s a side effect of the neural activation that
we interested in studying.

The way the signal changes is by hemodynamic response function (HDF). Represents changes in the
fmri signal that’s triggered by neuronal function. E.g if you clap your hands

(e.g. motor neurons in the motor cortex fires and a rise in oxygenation levels which goes down
below baseline).

fMRI data is a massive data problem

-each brain experiment consists of hundreds of brain volumes

- each experiment consists of hundreds of brain volumes

Each experiment may be repeated for multiple subjects

The total amount of data that needs to analyzed is staggering.

Statistical analysis of fMRI data is challenging.

- It’s a massive data problem.

Data proessing pipeplie.

LOCALISATION- determining which regions are active in the brain during a specific task or
behavioutr.

So theres a mix of the signal and noise together, bigger circles is bigger noise

When we do a statistical test on we do it at each voxel. Called a mass univariate analysis ( so