EUROISMAR 2019

An extraordinary feature of brain function is the encoding of information at multiple spatial and temporal scales, going from the cellular level in the form of action potentials to coordinated activity over billions of neurons spanning large parts of the brain, if not the entire brain, to achieve perception and behavior. Bridging and spanning these multiple scales of organization is an essential, but a daunting task necessary for understanding brain function and ultimately dysfunction. Rapid developments in instrumentation for RF transmission and signal detection, a push to exploit unique advantages available at very high magnetic fields (achieving 7 Tesla in 1999 and currently at 10.5T for human imaging), despite the major challenges of imaging at the correspondingly high RF frequencies, and a plethora of novel imaging acquisition techniques that increase spatiotemporal sampling has been bringing transformative changes into our ability to map human brain function and connectivity. These developments complemented by other non-MR imaging methods hold the promise that in the near future it will be feasible to integrate information from the level of a single synapse to whole brain networks that define behavior.