Neuroimaging

Discovering New Frontiers in Neurodevelopmental Research: A Conversation with Dr. Marie Brossard-Racine

Dr. Racine’s work primarily focuses on unraveling the complex mechanisms behind function and dysfunction in children with neurodevelopmental disorders. From scanning babies to adolescents, her lab tackles the unique challenges of MRI scanning across different stages of childhood development.

A deep dive into the birth of the Brain Bank in Brazil with Dr. Lea T. Grinberg

Join me in this podcast where we travel with Dr Lea T. Grinberg, a professor at the University of California San Francisco, to Brazil to explore her career and her path towards creating the Brazilian Aging Brain Study Group in São Paulo and her own laboratory. Dr Grinberg dives into the hardships and the rewards involved with creating a brain bank and sharing brain tissues. This initiative had a great impact on research opportunities in Brazil and research output from Brazil because it was the first community-based autopsy service, which allowed them to observe and examine people’s brain at different stages of dementia. Today, many groups around the globe work and study the Brazil brain bank!

A quick guide to MRI and how it works

Magnetic Resonance Imaging, often referred to as MRI, is a term you’ve probably come across before, but the inner workings of this advanced medical technology might seem like a puzzle. With roughly 30 million MRI scans performed every year in the United States, MRI is the third most commonly used imaging technique after X-rays and computed tomography (CT) scans, and the second most used neuroimaging technique after electroencephalography (EEG). Don’t let these jargon-heavy terms intimidate you – by the end of this blog post, you will have a better understanding of how MRI works. So bear with me and think of me as your friendly guide in unraveling this captivating yet intricate subject.

Pain and the brain: a real labyrinth!

For our fifth episode of the QBIN podcast (in French), Professor Mathieu Roy, a researcher and professor at McGill University, joins us to talk about bio-imaging and pain. Through our discussion, we explore how bio-imaging has helped researchers like himself to better understand pain, which is complex and hard to treat. More specifically, bio-imaging techniques like MRI can help us find patterns in the brain that are associated with pain. We also explored different types of pain such as suffering, which is considered more psychological, as well as sharp and chronic pain. Finally, we ended the podcast by talking about potential differences between men and women when they experience pain, and in the effects of music on pain management. 

Forget Tylenol, Try Passion: A Journey into Pain Management

From the sudden agony of stepping on a Lego block to persistent aching from chronic conditions, everyone experiences pain. Sometimes we know the pain will subside quickly and we can just tough it out, but other times it’s more than we can (or want to) handle on our own. The quest for pain relief has led humans to explore a vast array of treatments, from traditional painkillers to alternative therapies like massages and ice packs. Pain is an essential evolutionary mechanism, serving to ensure our survival and reproduction. Even so, I’m sure most people would opt to take an Advil to stop a headache rather than worrying about the growth of our family tree.      

Hopefully this will help you sleep (or not…)

In this third episode of the QBIN podcast (in French), we talk about sleep and neuroimaging with postdoctoral researchers Claire André and Valentin Ourry. Through this conversation we explore how sleep is related to different physical, emotional, and cognitive processes. We also discussed how positron emission tomography scans (PET), magnetic resonance imaging scans (MRI) and electroencephalograms have helped us understand sleep and its relation to overall health and the processes of aging. André and Ourry teach us what it means to have good sleep and how that can have positive impacts in our lives. We also discuss how sleep deprivation is glamorized in society and how that can impair our performance.

What is Deep Learning, and what can it do for neuroimaging-based diagnoses?

In our everyday lives, we all process and recognize hundreds of different objects (colors, shapes, animals, faces…), and although we may not think about it, developing this ability is actually an intricate learning process. Much like people, machines can be taught object recognition by mimicking the learning process of the human brain. This process, called Deep Learning, is an application of artificial intelligence that, although designed to learn through a specific set of data at first, can continue to learn on its own and improve from experience, without being explicitly programmed to do so. 

Sex and Gender: Can we go beyond male or female in neuroimaging?

Have you ever wondered how and why we should think about sex AND gender when conducting research? Join Dr Buckley, Dr Flatt and me today as we question ourselves on these topics in the field of neuroimaging. We discuss topics from how to define sex and gender to discussing interesting results. This conversation denotes the importance of continuing this dialogue and including people from different fields in and outside of academia to gain a holistic view on sex and gender.

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