20 TH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE ORGANIZATION FOR HUMAN BRAIN MAPPING – A REPORT Katarzyna Cieśla, Mateusz Rusiniak, Agnieszka Pluta, Monika Lewandowska, Tomasz Wolak Bioimaging Research Center, World Hearing Center, Warsaw/Kajetany, Poland Corresponding author: Katarzyna Cieśla, Bioimaging Research Center, World Hearing Center, Mokra 17 Str., Kajetany, 05-830 Nadarzyn, Poland, e-mail: k.ciesla@ifps.org.pl Te 20 th Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping was held in Hamburg, Germany, from 8–12 June 2014. Tis year 3000 abstracts were submitted from 43 countries and there were 1200 oral presentations and posters, fgures which have grown signifcantly from the frst symposium in 1995 (in Paris), where there were about 700 attendees and 400 abstracts. In 2014 a new tra- dition was started, and the frst ‘Glass Brain’ award for out- standing achievements in neuroscience was given to Prof. Karl Zilles from the Jülich-Aachen Research Alliance. Te oral presentations at the OHBM 2014 meeting included 8 keynote lectures, 4 symposia, 16 morning workshops, and 16 regular oral sessions. Selected highlights Prof. Katrin Amunts, Director of the Vogt Institute for Brain Research, Heinrich-Heine University, Duesseldorf, and Director of the Institute of Neuroscience and Medi- cine, Research Centre Juelich. In the context of the ‘Big- Brain’ project, her team aims to refne high-quality models of the human brain using ultra-high resolution magnetic resonance systems (7 T) to give direct insight into brain cytoarchitecture, myeloarchitecture, and cognitive func- tion [see: http://www.fz-juelich.de]. Prof. Hanna Damasio, Director of the Dornsife Neuroim- aging Center at USC, Los Angeles, member of the Ameri- can Academy of Arts and Sciences, author of Lesion Anal- ysis in Neuropsychology and Human Brain Anatomy in Computerized Images, published by Oxford University Press. Prof. Damasio emphasized the importance of his- torical brain lesion studies (by Joseph Dejerine, Paul Bro- ca, Carl Wernicke, and others) which frst assigned certain cognitive functions to particular brain regions. She under- lined the neglect of neuroanatomical studies in neuroim- aging, which are now feasible with modern imaging sys- tems [see: http://www.usc.edu]. Prof. James Huxby, Director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth and Professor at the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMeC), University of Trento. Prof. Huxby focuses on neural decoding using multivari- ate pattern analysis (MVPA), an alternative to standard ap- proaches to image analysis. He considers individual neu- ral activity as a set of multi-dimensional vectors (based on voxels) that can be transformed back and forth between the common vector space of all brains and individual brains. He claims that MVPA distinguishes individual brain re- sponses more specifcally than currently used brain atlas- es [http://dartmouth.edu/]. Prof. Yaniv Assaf, Director of the Strauss Center for Com- putational Neuroimaging of Tel Aviv University. Prof. As- saf explores the mechanisms of neuroplasticity, including long-term-potentiation, synaptogenesis, and cell genesis. With the use of difusion-tensor imaging (DTI), his team has investigated structural brain plasticity, both in rats (induced by training them to make spatial decisions in a maze) and in humans (by playing a video racing game). Te team has found changes in brain structures, such as the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the cingulate, indicating adaptation mechanisms occurring afer only 90 mins of training (and more so following 5 days of training). Prof. Assaf believes that structural plasticity involves, principal- ly, swelling of existing glial cells and development of new astrocytes, as well as an increased production of myelin by oligodendrocytes [http://www.tau.ac.il/]. Selected symposia Brain machine interfaces: foundations and perspectives Dr Christian Buchel from the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf organized a symposium on the fol- lowing ICT solutions in brain studies: • systems providing real-time fMRI brain–computer neu- rofeedback (based on machine learning classifers and functional connectivity measures) which allow subjects to learn to change their own brain activity during fMRI (such training can serve as a therapeutic intervention for patients with neurological and psychiatric diseases); • real-time fMRI used to decode spatio-temporal brain activity patterns as letters of the alphabet in individu- als performing mental tasks (patients with motor im- pairments can ‘spell’ words on the PC screen); • algorithms to extract the exact neuronal representation of an intended movement in monkeys, who use a special interface to grasp and manipulate objects with a pros- thetic arm linked via electrode arrays to their sensori- motor cortex – the aim here is to restore motor func- tion in paralyzed human patients. Novel uses of natural viewing paradigms in EEG, fMRI, and fcMRI Dr Tamara Vanderwal (Yale Child Study Center, New Hav- en, Connecticut, USA) has gathered together scientists you use cinema movies to study brain function. Teir fndings indicate that, so long as the audience is attentive, individ- ual brain responses recorded with EEG and fMRI while watching a flm have audience-wide synchronization. In Reports • 56–59 © Journal of Hearing Science ® · 2014 Vol. 4 · No. 3 56