National Institute of Information and Communications Technology
Advanced ICT Research Institute
CREST-Brain Imaging Team
National Institute of Information and Communications Technology
Advanced ICT Research Institute
Our project, "the development of the noninvasive quantitative brain functional imaging technique", aims to develop the new noninvasive quantitative imaging techniques of brain function through quantification of brain activity.
To achieve this goal, we are conducting experiments with fMRI, NIRS, EEG and other physiological measurements on human subjects, and are focusing on the following issues:
We have developed the comprehensive system which records fMRI, EEG and other physiological measures simultaneously. Our system allows us to investigate relationship between phasic events and changes of fMRI signal. Actually, we revealed brain activity that accompany rapied eye movements during REM sleep by using our system (Miyauchi et al., 2009).
| Upper left | EEG and fMRI in our research center |
| Upper right | Schematic diagram of our simultaneous EEG/fMRI recording system (Click the image to display large size figure) |
| Lower left | Rapid eye movements during REM sleep in MR magnet (Click the Play button to play the movie) |
| Lower right | Brain activation accompanying rapid eye movements (Click the image to display large size figure) |
Using simultaneous recording of fMRI and physiological measures, we can remove physiological noise contaminating fMRI signals. This correction improves the SNR of fMRI signals. We can also investigate effects of cardiovascular and sympathetic nervous activity on fMRI signals with simultaneous recording. Up to now, these influence has not been considered in previous imaging studies.
Recently, by using spontaneous BOLD analysis (s-BOLD analysis), we revealed REM and NREM sleep-specific brain networks. This results indicate that we can identify a state-specific brain network without any tasks.
We believe that combining simultaneous EEG/fMRI recording and s-BOLD analysis can provide breakthrough in neuroscience.