Multimodal Functional Brain
Imaging Research Hub

St. Jude is highly motivated to develop a novel research arm to acquire cognitive and psychosocial data pre- and post-cancer therapy, for characterizing and predicting the effect of cancer and cancer-therapy on sensory, perceptual, cognitive, and emotional aspects of brain function and behavior, and for developing interventions with brain modulation and stimulation techniques to reverse the adverse cognitive effects of pediatric cancer. The major goals of the program are to:

1. integrate multimodal functional brain imaging with experimental and computational neuroscience techniques to understand and characterize adverse changes in brain function and network dynamics due to pediatric cancer and its treatment
2. innovate and apply novel approaches of neuromodulation and neurostimulation to reduce and reverse the adverse effects to improve cognitive function.

This new program will heavily rely on the application of multimodal functional brain imaging which requires highly sophisticated imaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS), electro/magnetoencephalography (EEG/MEG) and brain stimulation combined with novel experimental paradigms. Novel computational neuroscience, and artificial intelligence methods, including functional and effective connectivity, causality modeling, brain-computer interfaces and neurofeedback would be the key tools for scientific investigation and translational intervention in this new research program.