Joana Cabral is a Biomedical Engineer interested in deciphering mechanisms of brain function. She did her PhD in Computational Neuroscience with Gustavo Deco, Spain, followed by a postdoc at the Psychiatry department in Oxford, UK, with Morten Kringelbach. She returned to Portugal in 2017, where she maintains an extensive network of international collaborations. She has published over 60 research articles covering a wide range of neuroimaging studies and modelling works and has presented in over 40 international meetings. She was awarded the L’Oréal award for Women in Science in 2018 and is currently funded by Fundación La Caixa.

Talk details:

Intrinsic Modes of Brain Function: Evidence and Generative Mechanisms

Spontaneous fluctuations in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signals correlate across distant brain areas, forming functional subsystems that appear disrupted in numerous psychiatric and neurological disorders, pointing to a key role in brain function. However, the generative mechanism of fMRI signal correlations are not fully understood. In this talk, I will give an overview of the evidence gathered applying Leading Eigenvector Dynamics Analysis (LEiDA) on different neuroimaging datasets and the insights it provides to understand brain function. I will further show recent insights from rat experiments supporting the view that functional networks are linked with the universal principle of Resonance, understanding the organizing principles of functional networks is crucial to develop efficient strategies targeting long-range interactions between brain areas.

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