CORTEX conference by Stefan Everling

Blood-oxygenation-level dependent (BOLD) based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has revolutionized the way neuroscientists study the human brain. The technique allows large-scale functional mapping of cortical and subcortical brain areas during sensory, motor, and cognitive tasks. While task-based BOLD fMRI is tremendously successful in human brain studies, its application has been technically challenging in awake, behaving macaque monkeys, which have been used extensively as surrogates for human brain function in electrophysiological recording, pharmacological, lesion, and neuroanatomical studies for over 50 years.  
I will present results from several studies in which we have successfully utilized resting-state fMRI to investigate the organization of the saccadic eye movement network in macaque and more recently also in marmoset monkeys. Our results show that functional connectivity measures based on the low-frequency fluctuations of the BOLD signal are largely determined by the underlying anatomical architecture, but also display dynamic fluctuations that have been previously ignored.  I will show that the technique can be used to follow network reorganizations following stroke and for comparative mapping of human, macaque, and marmoset brain networks.