SPS BSI Webinar: Variability in Brain Functional Atlases: How important are they?

Join us 25 April 2025, at 1:00 PM ET for an exciting virtual talk by Dr. Gaelle E. Doucet entitled: “Variability in Brain Functional Atlases: How important are they?” as part of the activities of the Brain Space Initiative, co-sponsored by the Center for Translational Research in Neuroimaging and Data Science (TReNDS) and the Data Science Initiative, IEEE Signal Processing Society.

Abstract

Variability in Brain Functional Atlases: How important are they?

One major aspect of cognitive neuroimaging has been to use “reference” brain functional atlases to study the effect of age or different cognitive variables on specific brain networks. However, most of the current atlases are based on healthy young populations which may prevent the generalizability of network definitions to other populations. In this talk, I will discuss the degree of variability across brain atlases. I will further present two new brain atlases based on younger and older populations, respectively. Finally, I will discuss how this choice can impact neuroimaging results, which highlights the importance of this decision for future studies and the careful interpretation of already published results.

Biography

Dr. Doucet is the Director of the Brain Architecture, Imaging and Cognition (BrAIC) Lab at the Institute for Human Neuroscience, at Boys Town National Research Hospital (Omaha, NE). She earned her Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience, focusing on identifying resting-state networks and their link to mindwandering in healthy populations. She further pursued training in neuroimaging applied to clinical populations as a postdoctoral fellow at Thomas Jefferson University and then at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her lab uses multi-modal neuroimaging techniques to investigate the impact of age on the brain network architecture throughout the lifespan, and how it impacts cognitive functions, in healthy and clinical populations.

Recommended Articles:

•  G. E. Doucet, C. Goldsmith, K. Myers, D. L. Rice, G. Ende, D. J. Pavelka, M. Joliot, V. D. Calhoun, T. W. Wilson, L. Q. Uddin (2025) Dev-Atlas: A reference atlas of functional brain networks for typically developing adolescents. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 7:72:101523. (Link to Paper).
• G. E. Doucet, L. Labache, P. Thompson, M. Joliot, S. Frangou (2021) Atlas55+: A brain functional atlas for resting-state networks for late adulthood. Cerebral Cortex. 31: 1719–1731. (Link to Paper).
• G. E. Doucet, W. H. Lee, S. Frangou (2019) Evaluation of the spatial variability in the major resting-state networks across human brain functional atlases. Human Brain Mapping. 40:4577-4587. (Link to Paper).