Approved Research

Predicting cognitive ability from resting state and task fMRI

Lay summary

Evaluation of psychological, behavioral, and cognitive individual traits from brain imaging data is a long-standing goal for the neuroscience community. There has recently been an increasing interest in predicting measurements of cognitive ability from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measures, such as functional MRI (fMRI).

Our work will focus on developing novel methods for extracting meaningful features from functional MRI scans performed at rest (resting-state fMRI), and use these features to predict individual traits such as cognitive ability. Thus, we hope to provide a better understanding of the relations between brain functional connectivity, extracted from resting-state fMRI, and individual differences in cognitive ability. Moreover, we hope to offer a method that would be applicable for the prediction of other behavioral or cognitive measures and therefore would contribute to the scientific community.

By establishing a relationship between individual traits and brain connectivity, based on a single, short and easy to acquire fMRI scan, we will set the ground for investigation of pathological conditions and for prediction of disease state, symptoms and prognosis. Importantly, the resting-state fMRI scan does not require any special cognitive effort and therefore is suitable for clinical populations.