Achievement

Michael Cole, a psychology student at the University of Pittsburgh, is combining funcational magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with magnetoencephalograph (MEG) to validate a statistical method for measuring directed connectivity in the brain based on Granger causality. MEG provides high temporal resolution of responses, while fMRI provides high spatial resolution. By using both techniques in the same subjects performing the same task, Cole can study the dynamics of the human brain and determine which areas are communicating with each other during associative recall tasks.

Preliminary results show reactivation of secondary auditory cortical regions, normaly associated with auditory perception, based on recall of auditory information from visual cues. Similarly, reactivation was found in secondary visual cortical regions based on recall of visual information from auditory cues. This work demonstrates how multimodal imaging can reveal the neural processing involved in human memory.