Functional MRI

Brien Culhane, BS

FNIBI / People / Clinical Measurement Initiative, Functional MRI, Inpatient Activity, Neurocircuitry of OCD, Road to Recovery /

October 10, 2024

Brien received his Bachelor’s of Science with honors in psychology from Davidson College in 2022. At Davidson, Brien studied positive psychology and self-compassion, culminating in an honors thesis on the effects of a 90-minute single session loving-kindness meditation intervention for undergraduate well-being. As an RA in the fNIBI Lab, Brien’s work has primarily focused on longitudinal deep phenotyping studies involving multimodal data collection including video and audio recorded interviews, ecological momentary assessment, actigraphy, and fMRI with inpatients at McLean experiencing mood disorders, psychotic disorders, and OCD. Meanwhile, Brien has taken lead on a quality improvement project to assess the clinical utility of wearable devices for the monitoring of inpatient sleep and activity. Brien is presently preparing a manuscript for publication summarizing the first phase of this quality improvement project encompassing both quantitative and qualitative analysis. Brien intends to pursue a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology succeeding his time at McLean with aims of integrating spirituality, treatment, and technology in a career of research, teaching, and practice.

Naturalistic assessment of language and emotion

FNIBI / Current Projects, Grants / Aphasia, Current Projects, Diffusion MRI, Eye-tracking, Facial Recording, Functional MRI, Language Task, Neuroimaging, Participate in a Study, Presurgical Planning /

September 26, 2023

Naturalistic paradigms hold enormous potential for studying abnormal brain function. However, the development of clinical applications based on naturalistic approaches is still in its infancy. Our symposium at OHBM 2023 presented the challenges and recent advances in research directed at clinical translation of naturalistic paradigms for brain mapping. See here if you are interested in participating.

The project titled “Naturalistic Neuroimaging for Presurgical Language Mapping” funded by the NIH/NIDCD, aims to evaluate movie fMRI language mapping in neurosurgical patients with varying levels of language function. As part of this project, we evaluate the comprehension and expression elicited by movie-watching, versus conventional language mapping paradigms (covert sentence completion, covert antonym generation, passive story listening), in individuals with stroke-induced aphasia and healthy controls. Language performance is assessed after each paradigm with explicit language tasks based on the stimulus material presented in the paradigm, as well as with implicit measures. We predict that language performance will be comparable, and in most individuals with aphasia superior, for movie-watching relative to the other paradigms. See, our pilot data for this project in this paper.

DynAMos: “The Dynamic Affective Movie Clip Database for Subjectivity Analysis” is a new video database that includes holistic and dynamic emotion ratings from over 100 participants watching 22 affective movie clips. Recognizing the subjectivity inherent to emotional experiences, we provide in the database the full distribution of all participants’ ratings. We argue that this choice represents a paradigm shift with the potential to unlock new research directions, generate new hypotheses, and inspire novel methods in the Affective Computing community. There are several interdisciplinary use cases for the database: to provide dynamic norms for emotion elicitation studies (e.g., in psychology, medicine, and neuroscience), to train and test affective content analysis algorithms (e.g., for dynamic emotion recognition, video summarization, and movie recommendation), and to study subjectivity in emotional reactions (e.g., to identify moments of emotional ambiguity or ambivalence within movies, identify predictors of subjectivity, and develop personalized affective content analysis algorithms). The database is made freely available to researchers for noncommercial use at https://dynamos.mgb.org.

Modulation of the OCD neural network by conventional treatment

FNIBI / Current Projects / Actigraphy, Approach-Avoidance, Behavioral Task, Current Projects, Diffusion MRI, Eye-tracking, Functional MRI, Longitudinal, Neurocircuitry of OCD, Neuroimaging, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Repeated Measures, Smartphone /

September 1, 2022

This is a neuroimaging study conducted at McLean Hospital which is focused on studying changes in functional brain network architecture in patients with OCD over the course of intensive, residential treatment.

McLean-1000 Project to Characterize Anhedonia Phenotypes and Biomarkers

FNIBI / Current Projects / Actigraphy, Anhedonia, Behavioral Task, Depression, EEG, Functional MRI, Neuropsychological Assessment /

April 1, 2022

In collaboration with Kerry Ressler, the goal of this project is to improve our understanding of the neurobiology and treatment of anhedonia.

Progressive social withdrawal in trauma-exposed older adolescents and young adults: neurocircuitry predictors

FNIBI / Current Projects / Digital phenotyping, Functional MRI, Neuroimaging, Trauma /

April 1, 2021

In collaboration with Elizabeth Olson, this project aims to identify the contribution of a specific neural circuit to social withdrawal during the transition to adulthood (ages 16-20) in individuals with a history of interpersonal trauma exposure. Active and passive digital phenotyping metrics will be used to assess social withdrawal over the course of a 12-month follow-up. The hypothesis is that baseline functional connectivity within basolateral amygdala-ventromedial prefrontal cortex-nucleus accumbens circuitry will prospectively predict social withdrawal.

A Transdiagnostic Assessment Of Electroconvulsive Therapy Modulation Of Anhedonia And Reward Circuitry: Targets, Biomarkers And Predictors Of Response

FNIBI / Past Projects / Actigraphy, Anhedonia, Electroconvulsive Therapy, Functional MRI, Neuroimaging, Smartphone /

April 1, 2020

In collaboration with Joan Camprodon, the goal of this supplemental project was to capture temporally dense behavioral recordings from individuals receiving ECT and being studied using serial neuroimaging and clinical assessment as part of the parent grant, using smartphones, wearable devices, and audiovisual recordings.

Multimodal Approaches to Neurobiology of Traumatic Dissociation

FNIBI / Current Projects / Dissociation, Functional MRI, Neuroimaging, Trauma /

April 1, 2020

In collaboration with Milissa Kaufman, the goals of this study will be 1) to understand the differential biomarkers that map onto dissociative symptoms, and 2) to understand how these biomarkers may best predict trajectory of response to empirically based standard-of-care treatments. This naturalistic study will allow us to map the biology of dissociation, and importantly, the change in dissociative symptoms and underlying biomarkers over time, using naturalistic evidenced-based treatment for PTSD in 240 treatment-seeking patients with PTSD, and a range of dissociation.

Multimodal Imaging of Hippocampal-Cortical Networks and Mechanisms of Trauma-Related Intrusions

FNIBI / Current Projects / Functional MRI, Neuroimaging, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Trauma /

April 1, 2019

In collaboration with Isabelle Rosso, this study aims to identify brain processes that are associated with distinctive phenomenological characteristics of trauma memories that implicate sensory-perceptual brain networks, and that may be different than canonical brain networks of PTSD.

Circuit dynamics underlying longitudinal fluctuations in mood and cognition in bipolar patients

FNIBI / Current Projects / A Year in the Life, Actigraphy, Arterial Spin Labeling, Audio Diary Recording, Bipolar Disorder, Completed Projects, Depression, Dyadic Recording, Ecological Momentary Assessment, Eye-tracking, Facial Recording, Functional MRI, Neurocognitive Tasks, Neuroimaging, Schizophrenia, Smartphone, Social Signal Processing Algorithms /

January 1, 2018

Research on affective disorders, such as bipolar disorder, and on psychotic disorders is hampered by a lack of basic understanding of the course of dynamic circuit properties that might underlie fluctuations in mood and cognition.Bipolar and psychotic disorders at its core are unstable clinical conditions: at its extremes, it can result in periods of profound changes in mood and cognition (i.e., mania, major depression, and psychosis). And yet, remarkably little has been done to understand the basic mechanisms underlying the fluctuating course common to these individuals. We hope to better understand and characterize the natural course of changes in mood and cognition and associated environmental variables in individuals with severe affective and psychotic disorders using mobile behavioral technology. We believe that this will further enable advances in our understanding of how these disorders develop, paving the way for the development and evaluation of new treatment strategies.

Frontoparietal Network Integrity and Risk for Psychosis

FNIBI / Past Projects / Functional MRI, Genetics, Neuroimaging, Psychosis /

April 1, 2014

The major goal of this study was to probe the biology of the frontoparietal control network, a key brain network engaged in higher cognition and disrupted in chronic in psychosis by linking genetics, neuroimaging and clinical variables in individuals at clinical and genetic high risk for psychosis.