Name:                  Henning Reimann

Affiliation:           Experimental Ultrahigh-Field Magnetic Resonance, Max Delbrück Center

                             for Molecular Medicine (MDC) in the Helmholtz Association, Berlin, Germany

Title:                    Translational Neuroimaging – from Humans to Mice and Back

Abstract:

The mouse is the best investigated model organism in the scientific community. It gives access to a number of very instructive techniques that are simply not available for humans: read-out technologies of substantially higher spatial and temporal resolution than fMRI could possibly provide allows to track neural microcircuits down to the level of single cells, optogenetic control of entire brain regions and distinct peripheral fiber types are established standards in many labs, and genetic engineering strategies permit to investigate the role of single endogenous proteins in the central processing of sensory modalities and functional connectivity. Yet, invasive techniques applied to the mouse brain are restricted to small areas, whereas in humans non-invasive whole-brain imaging techniques prevail. This technical incongruity inserts a gap in translational research that hampers a direct translation of brain functions across species. Murine fMRI is getting increasingly feasible with technical advances. Yet, (somato)sensory mouse fMRI is difficult to achieve and still far from being established in the field. I will briefly elaborate on progress and current challenges in mouse fMRI and our attempts to build a dedicated framework for translational fMRI to reveal translational differences and similarities of sensory processing on the level of large-scale brain patterns.