Psychologist Russ Poldrack is a mind reader of sorts, but not in the traditional sense of the word. Instead, he makes movies of blood flow in the brain using functional MRI to draw insights into the function of specific regions of the brain to decipher how they control behavior. In one example, Poldrack has shown how people with obsessive-compulsive disorder have enhanced “salience networks” that turn on when surprising things happen. This finding could have “very profound” outcomes in diagnosis and treatment, Poldrack tells host Russ Altman in this wide-ranging exploration of the implications and the ethics of functional neuroimaging on Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast.
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Chapters:
(00:00:00) Introduction
Russ Altman introduces guest Russ Poldrack, a professor of psychology and of psychiatry and behavioral science at Stanford University.
(00:03:15) Path into Neuroimaging
How Poldrack moved from cognitive psychology into functional MRI research.
(00:04:18) Functional MRI
How MRI can be used to track brain activity.
(00:06:59) Mapping Brain Activity
How tasks and behaviors are linked to patterns of brain activation.
(00:08:02) Resting Functional MRI
How resting scans revealed large-scale brain networks.
(00:09:00) Brain Networks and Behavior
How the brain controls stopping, switching, and habits.
(00:10:34) Layers of Brain Organization
Why neuroimaging studies the brain across multiple scales.
(00:13:04) Individual Brain Differences
How shared brain networks vary across individuals.
(00:13:34) Scanning Himself
Why Poldrack repeatedly scanned his own brain.
(00:15:47) Mapping One Brain Deeply
How repeated scans revealed reliable individual brain patterns.
(00:18:59) Neuroimaging and Mental Health
How brain network differences may relate to depression and OCD.
(00:21:42) Reproducibility in Brain Imaging
How larger and deeper data sets improve reliability.
(00:24:51) Analytic Variability
Why the same data can produce different conclusions.
(00:26:39) Multiverse Analysis
How testing many analyses helps identify stable findings.
(00:27:55) Open Science
How data sharing and standards improve transparency.
(00:30:29) Privacy and Brain Data
How researchers protect participants when sharing neuroimaging data.
(00:32:17) Future In a Minute
Rapid-fire Q&A: neuroimaging, reproducibility, and AI in science.
(00:33:22) Conclusion
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