Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience & MINDLab ANNUAL REPORT 2014 au CFIN / MINDLab Annual Report 2014, published July 2015 Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience (CFIN) Aarhus University / Aarhus University Hospital Aarhus Sygehus, Building 10G, Nørrebrogade 44, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark www.cfin.au.dk Editors: Leif Østergaard and Henriette Blæsild Vuust, CFIN Design and layout: Henriette Blæsild Vuust Printed in Denmark by GP-Tryk A/S ISBN 978-87-992371-7-3 Heading home from conference The Department of Clinical Medicine at Aarhus University’s car all packed and ready to return to Aarhus after the Neuroscience of Music Conference in Dijon, France, in May 2014. Music in the Brain researchers Maria Witek, Rebeka Bodak, Line Gebauer and Bjørn Petersen ready for ‘take off’. Photo: Henriette Blæsild Vuust Introduction - 2014 in words by Leif Østergaard 2014 was the final year of the funding period for the impressive range of leading international researchers: From prestigious MINDLab UNIK grant, awarded in 2008 to Aarhus Helsinki, Elvira Brattico: an expert on the cognitive and University to found an interdisciplinary neuroscience and affective neurosciences of music and the relation between cognition hub that integrates research activities across Aarhus brain plasticity and musical expertise. From Oxford, Morten University and Aarhus University Hospital. MINDLab has been Kringelbach: an expert on pleasure and on the emotional tremendously productive in terms of scientific output and new aspects of music and other auditory stimuli. And from collaborations, both nationally and internationally. Across London, Lauren Stewart: an expert within the neuroscience Aarhus University, the grant helped generate 536 publications and neuropsychology of music, with a special emphasis on and 6 patents. The project involved 52 senior investigators, disorders of musical processing and on learning and plasticity 23 postdocs, and 48 PhD students across all AU former and in relation to musical training. We are proud to share offices current Faculties, and helped bring in additional external and infrastructure with the MIB Center as it grows – and look funding far in excess of the 120 DKK million Government forward to exciting interactions with its researchers! grant. MINDLab set out to reach other tangible goals: New educations, new technologies to study the human brain and Recognition in science comes in many forms: In 2014, Maria its diseases, and spin-out companies to help bring these Witek from the MIB group was awarded the Adam Krims innovations into the diagnosis and management of patients. In Memorial Prize, and MIB researcher Niels Christian Hansen recent years, we have reported on exciting new technologies an EliteForsk travel scholarship. Nina Kerting Iversen was being developed by MINDLab researchers to detect and awarded one of the prestigious Sapere Aude Research Talent diagnose new aspects of brain disorders, and last year on the awards, and Chris and Uta Frith received the prestigious COMBAT Stroke company. Adding to the Master program in 2014 Jean-Nicod Prize. Morten Overgaard was recognized Neuroscience and Neuroimaging at the Sino-Danish Center by the World Economic Forums Young Scientist Award and in Beijing already coordinated by CFIN / MINDLab researcher I was honored to receive the Danish Alzheimer Associations Kim Ryan Drasbek, CFIN / MINDLab and Interacting Minds Research Prize. More importantly, CFIN / MINDLab Center affiliated researchers Mikkel Wallentin, Kristian Tylén, researchers got highly competitive grants as a token of their Ethan Weed, and Riccardo Fusaroli established a Bachelor creative ideas, allowing them to carry out the exciting research program in Cognitive Sciences in 2014, opening its doors that will become news - and perhaps awards - in the years to to Danish and international students in 2015. Meanwhile, come. The success of CFIN / MINDLab is felt in other ways plans are underway to establish programs within integrative as we struggle to squeeze more scientists into every office, neuroscience, building on the unique knowledge and research and have to limit desk-access in our offices in the Danish approaches that have emerged from CFIN / MINDLab over the Neuroscience Center. We are grateful for the patience of our years. The UNIK grant period ends on a long and sour note in researchers, for whom ‘close interdisciplinary interaction’ is terms of the embedment of MINDLab’s successful activities, taking on a whole new meaning right now – and thank those as we still lack a sustainable funding model to secure key who help us explore solutions as the anticipated expansion scientists and running costs associated with our neuroimaging of our activities seems to outgrow the space allocated in the facility. We hope that dialog may help secure this critical part future Aarhus University Hospital in Skejby. of our activities in the near future. With the CFIN / MINDLab leadership, I thank you for your Joyful notes filled CFIN / MINDLab in October 2014 as the support, your collaboration and interest, and hope you enjoy Danish National Research Foundation announced its decision the reports from some of our researchers in this Annual to fund the Music in the Brain (MIB) Center, to be established Report. at Aarhus University from 2015. Peter Vuust has led the development of a unique and immensely successful research On behalf of the CFIN / MINDLab group leaders, approach to the study of music, combining knowledge and methods from across musicology, psychology, and Leif Østergaard neuroscience to examine the fundamental brain mechanisms CFIN / MINDLab director associated with the processing of music – with a special emphasis on the anticipatory aspects of both brain function and music. The Music in the Brain Center is joined by an page 3 NEUROPHYSICS by Sune Nørhøj Jespersen & Brian Hansen The main advantages of magnetic resonance imaging as Ahmad now directs his efforts towards the study of tissue compared to other imaging techniques, is its noninvasiveness microscopic changes as a result of mental stress. He and its versatility. However, being based on magnetic works in close collaboration with research assistant Andrey properties of tissue, the relation to neurobiology and Chuhutin. This project is supported by close collaborations physiology is somewhat indirect. In the neurophysics group, with Ove Wiborg (Translational Neuropsychiatry Unit), Jens R. we work towards establishing a clearer connection between Nyengaard (Stereology), and Christopher D. Kroenke (Oregon contrast in the MRI images and the underlying biological Health and Science University). Chronic mild stress (CMS) properties. This involves a combination of biophysical and is one of the leading known causes of depression. However, mathematical modeling, and subsequent validation using the lack of sensitive and noninvasive methods to study tissue e.g. disease models and comparison to traditional histology changes represents a significant challenge before we can and stereology. A longer-term goal is then to translate these hope to better understand the disease and develop new methods to a clinical setting. This, in turn, entails the design of treatment regimens. In this project, fixed brain tissue from rats robust and rapid acquisition and estimation strategies. exposed to chronic mild stress investigated with our neurite model of diffusion weighted MRI2,3, the kurtosis sequence4,5, To aid in our comparisons of diffusion MRI to tissue histology, and histology in order to identify and map tissue changes in Lundbeck postdoc Ahmad Raza Khan has developed a new anhedonic and resilient animals. The preliminary results from 3-D methodology to quantify local fibre directionality from this work have shown changes in prefrontal cortex and were confocal microscopy. The method is a generalization of 2-D accepted for presentation at ISMRM 2015. image analysis methods, where great care must be taken to correct for different sources of bias in the third (through plane) Diffusion Kurtosis Imaging (DKI) is an extension of Diffusion direction. The result is a procedure for rapid quantification of Tensor Imaging5, and aims to approximate the Diffusion tissue properties, in a manner appropriate for comparison to Weighted Signal in a more precise manner by accounting for MRI. Figure 1 illustrates local neurite orientation anisotropy major non-Gaussian diffusion effects. In DKI imaging studies, acquired using Ahmads method along with confocal tissue a wide range of different gradient strengths (b-values) is used. microscopy sections. His work is currently in press with This however is known to affect the estimated diffusivity and NeuroImage1. kurtosis parameters6. Hence there is a need to assess the validity of the DKI signal equation and the accuracy of the estimated parameters as a function of b-value. The purpose of an analytical project carried out by Andrey Chuhutin is to examine the error in a mean kurtosis parameter with respect to the ground truth, using a biophysical model2 with parameters determined from real data and to explore practical ways of reducing the effect of this error. The results identified a rather high degree of deviation between true mean kurtosis values and the experimentally acquired ones (as a function of b-value), suggest caution when relating kurtosis parameters acquired with current standards to tissue structure, and when using them in efforts to build reliable neural tissue models. We previously developed a pulse sequence