Lars and I went to a conference on human brain mapping between 10-15 of June. The event took place in the capital of renaissance art, Florence, Italy, where impressive ancient architecture and tasty Chianti wines are almost too commonplace.
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#img 3 #The conference focus is on functional imaging of the human brain, using mostly fMRI techniques – a rapidly evolving field. One of the emerging trends here is to apply similar analysis techniques as for fMRI to the structural scans (MRI) to analyse differences in tissue types as a complemetary way of looking at the functional information. This field, Voxel Based Morphometry (VBM) is of greatest interest to me and Lars at the moment, due to the Reykjavik AGES study of 5500 elderly subjects. Another area of interest is the automated segmentation of anatomical structures in the brain (picture)
#img 4 #We met a lot of old and new friends at the conference; old work colleagues, people interested in possible collaborations, and some people that we just liked. Stella (picture) was a greek psychologist interested in dyslexia that belonged in the latter category.
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#img 6 #After the conference my girlfriend Elin came and we rented a car travelling the Tuscan region and in particular the Chianti wine district… When coming home we realized that we will need a wine cellar for all the bottles we brought…
Best regards!
Jesper
#img 7 #02.07.06 Jesper Fredriksson jesper@raforninn.is