Imaging and Interfacing with the Human Brain

Prof. Bin He
Director, Center for Neurengineering
Distinguished McKnight Professor
IEEE Fellow, AIMBE Fellow, IOP Fellow, ISFSI Fellow

Abstract
How much we can understand the human brain depends largely on our ability to image the brain function. Understanding the brain will also lead to enhancement of our ability to interact with the human brain. Over the past decades, functional neuroimaging has emerged as an important interdisciplinary research area. This has been promoted by the development of functional MRI and the significant advancement in electrophysiological neuroimaging using electroencephalogram or magnetoencephalogram. We will discuss the merits and challenges of electrophysiological neuroimaging integrating EEG with MRI, and review our recent development of oscillatory source imaging methodology, which promises to provide spatio-temporal imaging ability to probe normal and abnormal brain activity. We will review the merits and challenges in multimodal functional neuroimaging integrating electrophysiological and hemodynamic measurements. Our recent work indicates that, the BOLD fMRI and electrophysiological data can be integrated in a principled way, leading to substantially enhanced spatio-temporal resolution for functional imaging of dynamic brain activation. We will also discuss neural interfacing systems which interact with the brain and how functional neuroimaging can aid in designing powerful noninvasive brain-computer interface systems. Examples will be discussed for investigation of co-localization of hemodynamic and electrophysiological signals associated with motor imagery for brain-computer interface applications, and a brain-computer interface system to control the flight of a virtual helicopter in a 3-D space.
   
Bio
Dr. Bin He is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Associate Director for Research of Institute for Engineering in Medicine and Director of Center for Neuroengineering, at the University of Minnesota. Dr. He's major research interests include neuroengineering, functional biomedical imaging, and bioelectromagnetism. He has pioneered the development of neuroengineering and electrophysiological source imaging, and made significant contributions to EEG source imaging, multimodal functional neuroimaging, brain-computer interface, magnetoacoustic imaging, and cardiac electric tomography. Dr. He has served as an associate editor or editorial board member of a number of international journals, and chaired the 2009 Annual International Conference of IEEE EMBS held in Minneapolis. Dr. He is a Fellow of IEEE, American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, Institute of Physics, and International Society of Functional Source Imaging, and was 2009-2010 President of IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.