Seminar by Ambuj K. Singh
Learning about Learning: Discovery and Analysis of Human Brain Subnetwork Biomarkers from fMRI Data
Ambuj K. Singh
University of California, Santa Barbara
Date: Wednesday, December 11th, 2013
Time: 12:00 Noon
Venue: CS102.Abstract:
Patterns in the dynamics of the brain connectome in the context of specific tasks holds a grand promise for understanding and eventually being able to manipulate neural diseases and disorders, human learning, decision making and other high-level functions. Studying the brain as a network has become increasingly popular due to the realization that its large spectrum of functionality cannot be achieved by activation of independent functionally specialized regions, but instead arises due to their dynamic interactions. Most network studies of the brain focus on the global networks properties of the brain connectome. We take an alternative approach and zoom onto the specific subnetwork interactions related to learning. We study the significant network sub-structures induced by human brain activity measured via fMRI in the context of a motor learning task. We apply a method for analyzing global-state networks and discover statistically significant nodes, edges, and subnetworks that predict learning across subjects.
About the speaker:
Ambuj K. Singh is a Professor of Computer Science and Biomolecular Science and Engineering at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He received a B.Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1989. His research interests are in querying and mining of large datasets, especially as they pertain to graphs, networks, high-dimensional and biological data. He has written about 200 technical papers in the areas of distributed computing, databases, and bioinformatics and graduated over 20 Ph.D. students. He has led numerous interdisciplinary projects, and currently leads an IGERT on network science and UCSB's Information Networks Academic Research Center.