Introduction to intracranial neurophysiology and mechanisms of functional MRI

Abstract

In my talk, I will discuss the main types of neurons, synaptic transmission, principles of intra-cellular and extra-cellular neurophysiological recordings, and the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the blood oxygenation level dependent functional MRI response to sensory stimuli.

Biography

Dr. Amir Shmuel obtained his B.Sc. in Computer Science with minors in Statistics and Math, and M.Sc. in computer vision at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He conducted his Ph.D. research in Neuroscience at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. He then investigated neurovascular coupling and mechanisms underlying functional MRI as a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for MR Research of the University of Minnesota and the Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, Germany. He is Associate Professor of Neurology, Neurosurgery, Physiology, and Biomedical Engineering at McGill University. Dr. Shmuel holds a Canada Research Chair in Neuroscience and Brain Imaging, and serves as Co-Director of the Quebec Platform for High-Field Brain Imaging. His research program focuses on two goals. The first is to understand functional brain imaging signals and to evaluate the degree to which they reflect the underlying neuronal activity. The second is to elucidate the principles and processes utilized by the cerebral cortex to analyze sensory information.