  {"id":9284,"date":"2021-10-15T08:25:29","date_gmt":"2021-10-15T13:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/vise\/?p=9284"},"modified":"2021-10-15T11:37:59","modified_gmt":"2021-10-15T16:37:59","slug":"vise-researchers-receive-1m-grant-to-explore-brain-body-connections-and-advance-understanding-of-how-brains-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/vise\/vise-researchers-receive-1m-grant-to-explore-brain-body-connections-and-advance-understanding-of-how-brains-age\/","title":{"rendered":"VISE researchers receive $1M grant to explore brain-body connections and advance understanding of how brains age"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering has received a $1.1 million NIH grant to investigate connections between the brain and body to advance the understanding of aging in normal and pathological brains.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-7509 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.vanderbilt.edu\/vu-URL\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/193\/2019\/04\/19170756\/Catie-Chang1-209x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"209\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.vanderbilt.edu\/vu-URL\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/193\/2019\/04\/19170756\/Catie-Chang1-209x300.jpg 209w, https:\/\/cdn.vanderbilt.edu\/vu-URL\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/193\/2019\/04\/19170756\/Catie-Chang1-768x1101.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.vanderbilt.edu\/vu-URL\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/193\/2019\/04\/19170756\/Catie-Chang1-454x650.jpg 454w, https:\/\/cdn.vanderbilt.edu\/vu-URL\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/193\/2019\/04\/19170756\/Catie-Chang1-70x100.jpg 70w, https:\/\/cdn.vanderbilt.edu\/vu-URL\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/193\/2019\/04\/19170756\/Catie-Chang1.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 209px) 100vw, 209px\" \/>Catie Chang, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, leads the research team, which will focus on developing machine learning methods that can automatically reconstruct physiological\u00a0signals from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data.<\/p>\n<p>Increased availability of large datasets from fMRI has supported deeper research into functional systems of the human brain. Changes in breathing and heart rate are known to perturb fMRI\u00a0measurements of brain activity, yet such physiological\u00a0effects are often\u00a0disregarded as confounds or noise in functional imaging studies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cfMRI signals related to breathing and heart rate are often discarded, but there is\u00a0increasing recognition that they may carry valuable information about brain health,\u201d Chang said.<\/p>\n<p>The research team includes co-investigator Yuankai Huo, assistant professor in computer science and consultant, and Bennett Landman, professor of electrical and computer engineering, as well co-investigator Mara Mather from the University of Southern California. She is a professor of gerontology, psychology, and biomedical engineering.<\/p>\n<p>Vanderbilt graduate students Roza Bayrak and Sarah Goodale and postdoctoral researcher Jorge Salas (NEURDY Lab) contributed key ideas and methods to the proposal and direction of this research.\u201cI am excited for the potential of this project to increase our understanding of aging and\u00a0Alzheimer\u2019s disease, and to create new tools for studying physiological effects.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Such tools could enhance the large amount of existing fMRI\u00a0datasets with information about physiology and\u00a0brain-body interactions.<\/p>\n<p>This project is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH\u00a0RF1MH125931-01A1 BRAIN Initiative R01).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering has received a $1.1 million NIH grant to investigate connections between the brain and body to advance the understanding of aging in normal and pathological brains. Catie Chang, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, leads the research team, which will focus on developing machine learning methods&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":670,"featured_media":7509,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[114,471,591,32,178,240,231,118,64,31],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cdn.vanderbilt.edu\/vu-URL\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/193\/2019\/04\/19170756\/Catie-Chang1.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p98pzF-2pK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/vise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9284"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/vise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/vise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/vise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/670"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/vise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9284"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/vise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9286,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/vise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9284\/revisions\/9286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/vise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/vise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/vise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanderbilt.edu\/vise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}