Jekyll2026-07-10T15:41:26-04:00https://fim.nimh.nih.gov/feed.xmlSection on Functional Imaging MethodsThis is the webpage for the Section on Functional Imaging Methods at the National Institute of Mental Health.Section on Functional Imaging MethodsSaying goodbye to our post-bacs2026-06-29T00:00:00-04:002026-06-29T00:00:00-04:00https://fim.nimh.nih.gov/postbac_farewell Farewell lunch for Cassie and Plyfaa Farewell lunch for Cassie and Plyfaa Farewell lunch for Stephanie
Farewells to our post-bacs

Its the bittersweet time of year when we have to say goodbye to our beloved post-bacs. This year, we're sending four of our post-bacs off to their next steps:

  • Plyfaa is off to UCSD for a PhD in Psychology
  • Cassie is staying (somewhat) closer to home, as she starts as a GPP student at the NIH and UCL
  • Stephanie is off to the University of Washington to start her Master's in Public Health.
  • Esther is heading to the Medical College of Wisconsin to start medical school

]]>Section on Functional Imaging MethodsSFIM goes to OHBM in Bordeaux2026-06-12T00:00:00-04:002026-06-12T00:00:00-04:00https://fim.nimh.nih.gov/ohbm2026SFIM took a trip to Bordeaux, Paris to present their work at the Annual Meeting of the Organiztion for Human Brain Mapping

Posters

Talks

In addition to the poster sessions, SFIM also gave talks!

Check out some photos of the lab in Bordeaux!

Cassie at her poster Tyler and Esther at Esther's poster Cassie presenting her poster Marlene presenting her poster Peter, Tyler and Esther posing outside the conference venue Tyler giving her presentation Javier presenting his poster Josh presenting his poster Isabel (an SFIM alum) presenting her poster Josh giving his presentation SFIM (and friends) posing at OHBM
SFIM (and friends) at OHBM

]]>Section on Functional Imaging Methods2026 Post-bac Poster Day2026-05-04T00:00:00-04:002026-05-04T00:00:00-04:00https://fim.nimh.nih.gov/postbac_posterday_2026The SFIM post-bacs have been hard at work! Esther, Marly, Marlene, and Stephanie had the opportunity to present posters of the projects they've been working on to the IRP during NIH Post-bac Poster Day.

Check out some photos of them presenting their work:

SFIM Post-bacs posing after successfully presenting their posters Marly posing next to her poster Stephanie presenting her poster to a crowd Stephanie presenting her poster Esther talking to someone at her poster Marlene presenting her poster Marly presenting her poster Esther presenting her poster
SFIM post-bacs presenting their posters at the 2026 IRP post-bac poster day

If you want to learn more about what our post-bacs are working on, check out their posters!

  • Esther Lin: Investigating feedback activity underlying face processing with high-resolution fMRI
  • Marly Rubin: Multi-echo profiling of resting-state fMRI beyond canonical networks
  • Marlene Smith: What is the Optimal Number of Independent Components for Multi-Echo fMRI Denoising?
  • Stephanie Swegle: Characterizing CSF Volume Change across functional activation, alertness states, and breath-hold tasks at 7T

    • ]]>    Section on Functional Imaging Methods    SFIM goes to DC BrainHack2026-04-16T00:00:00-04:002026-04-16T00:00:00-04:00https://fim.nimh.nih.gov/brainhack_dcIn April, members of SFIM attended the DC BrainHack. The theme of the event was "From mice to (hu)man" and focused on bridging neuroscience research across analytic levels.

    Marly, Marlene, Josh, Dan and Tyler attended the two day meeting, and worked on a variety of projects:

    • Dan and Marlene worked with a group of postdocs and grad students to teach about multi-echo fMRI methods and to improve a tool for simulating multi-echo fMRI data. Check out their work on our GitHub
    • Marly contributed the frontend UI to mriqcdb-aggregator, a website that allows researchers to explore and compare MRIQC quality control metrics across datasets and benchmark their own results.
    • Tyler gave a talk titled "Investigating Mesoscale Brain Function with Layer fMRI" where she discussed what layer fMRI is and why we should care about it

    ]]>    Section on Functional Imaging Methods    2025 Gingerbread House Competition2025-12-20T00:00:00-05:002025-12-20T00:00:00-05:00https://fim.nimh.nih.gov/gingerbreadhouse_2026Every winter, the NIH Clinical Center puts on a gingerbread house competition. This competition began in 2004 by the Clinical Center Nursing Department to promote teamwork and holiday spirit between nursing units. Today, the competition has expanded to all Clinical Center staff. All entries recieve the same gingerbread house kit, but are encouraged to get creative, and votes are collected electronically for the best gingerbread house.

    This year, SFIM entered with the MAGNET-ficent Ginger-BRAIN house. Led by post-doc Sharif Kronemer, the members of SFIM worked together to create a sugary 7T MRI. Although our candy scanner and completely anatomically accurate brain did not win a prize, much fun was had!

    First image of the gingerbread house Second image of the gingerbread house Third image of the gingerbread house
    The MAGNET-ficent Ginger-BRAIN house in action
    ]]>    Section on Functional Imaging Methods    NIMH Training Day 20252025-09-25T00:00:00-04:002025-09-25T00:00:00-04:00https://fim.nimh.nih.gov/trainingday2025Each year, fellows at NIMH have the opportunity to share their work at the NIMH IRP Fellow's Training Day. Post-bacs and post-docs present posters and oral presentations to the NIMH community, giving them the opportunity to foster potential collaboration and build community within NIMH. This year, SFIM post-bacs presented the following posters at Training Day:

  • Cassie Levesque: Afterimages as a method of inducing perceptual reality monitoring errors
  • Esther Lin: Dissociating Feedforward and Feedback Processing of Illusory Face Detection using 7T fMRI
  • Marly Rubin: rt-cog: real-time fMRI monitoring of brain activity and cognitive processes
  • Plyfaa Suwanamalik-Murphy: Examining How Spontaneous Eye Measures Indicate Conscious and Unconscious Sensory Neural Processing
  • Stephanie Swegle: Characterizing CSF volume change as a function of brain activation and alertness at 7T

    • In addition to her poster, Plyfaa Suwanamalik-Murphy was also selected to give an oral presentation on her work with Sharif Kronemer, entitled "The Eyes Know What the Brain Hears."

    Plyfaa giving her Training Day Talk


    We're also excited to share that Sharif Kronemer was announced as the winner of the 2025 Julius Axelrod Memorial Fellowship for Basic Research. This award is presented to an outstanding IRP post-doctoral, research or clinical fellow with the goal of commemorating scientific achievements and facilitate their career growth and development. The winner of this award receives a supplement to help support ongoing research and a travel award.

    Sharif Kronemer - Axelrod Award
    ]]>    Section on Functional Imaging Methods    2026 NIMH FARE Awards2025-07-09T00:00:00-04:002025-07-09T00:00:00-04:00https://fim.nimh.nih.gov/fareawards2026SFIM post-doc Sharif Kronemer and former graduate student Samika Kumar were awarded the 2026 NIMH Fellows Award for Research Excellence (FARE). Fellows have the opportunity to submit an abstract to a blind study section; the top 25% of abstracts are selected as FARE winners. FARE winners receive a stipend for travel and the opportunity to present their research at the NIH Research Festival or an NIH Special Interest Group seminar series. Congratulations, Sharif and Samika!

    ]]>    Section on Functional Imaging Methods    SFIM heads to OHBM 20252025-06-18T00:00:00-04:002025-06-18T00:00:00-04:00https://fim.nimh.nih.gov/ohbm2025SFIM is off to Brisbane, Australia for OHBM 2025! This year, we have 5 posters:

  • Josh Dean and Burak Akin: #1355 - fMRI Correlates of Dynamic Low Frequency Photoplethysmography (PPG) and Arterial Pressure Measures
  • Javier Gonzalez-Castillo: #1375 - Multi-echo Functional Connectivity as an Evaluation Metric for Denoising
  • Josh Faskowitz: #1381 - Edge event organization across temporal categories
  • Dan Handwerker: #1527 - tedana: Expanding flexibility for multi-echo fMRI noise removal methods
  • Stephanie Swegle: #1990 - Towards mapping CSF volume change at high resolutions at 7T

    • If you're at OHBM, feel free to swing by and check them out, or email the authors if you have any additional questions.

    ]]>    Section on Functional Imaging Methods    Saying goodbye to Josh D.2025-06-13T00:00:00-04:002025-06-13T00:00:00-04:00https://fim.nimh.nih.gov/josh_d_goodbyeJosh and his mentor, Burak

    It's that time of year when we're sad to say goodbye to our post-bacs as they head off to their next steps. We had the chance to celebrate Josh over lunch as he heads off to University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. We'll miss him terribly, but we're excited to see all the he accomplishes in medical school!

    ]]>    Section on Functional Imaging Methods    Using Illusions to Probe the Origins of Consciousness2024-10-21T00:00:00-04:002024-10-21T00:00:00-04:00https://fim.nimh.nih.gov/kronemer_scibitesIn October, Sharif Kronemer was interviewed for an NIH SciBite, where he got the opportunity to discuss his research on Consciousness. Check out the video, and if you want to learn more, you can see publications and presentations about this topic here.

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