Thank you to everyone who joined us for October’s MCOS with Silvia Caminiti, PhD! Missed it? The recording is available here.
More details and key announcements below!
We hope you enjoy it!
Date: November 21st, 2025
Time: 15:00 CET, 09:00 EST (expected duration: 1.5h)
Registration: Please register here.
Title: Validating brain connectivity measures: integrating biological, statistical, and clinical evidence
Speaker: Alan Jasanoff, Department of Biological Engineering, MIT, USA
Andrea Hildebrandt, Department of Psychology, University of Oldenburg, Germany
Zhen-Qi Liu, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Canada
Matej Perovnik, Department of Neurology, University of Ljubljana University, Slovenia
Abstract: In this symposium, we will show how validation frameworks across biological, statistical and clinical dimensions help ground our interpretation of connectivity measures, establishing more reliable tools for both basic neuroscience and clinical applications. After a short introduction on the concept of validation by the organizers, Alan Jasanoff will tackle biological validation, showing how a novel genetically encoded activity reporter in animal models can inform the biological basis of fMRI brain connectivity. Second, Andrea Hildebrandt will show how a systematic characterization of the brain connectivity multiverse can provide valuable insights into assessment of statistical robustness across analytical choices as a prerequisite for enhancing replicability. Third, Zhen-Qi Liu will provide an overview of the properties of MR, MEG and PET brain connectivity measures, highlighting which metrics possess desirable statistical and biological properties. Last, Matej Perovnik will show a real-life example of systematic clinical validation based on PET brain networks..
The MCOS promotes rigor in research and resource sharing. We aim to hold MCOS every third Friday of the month, subject to change due to speaker availability. Please stay tuned for MCOS updates and reminders on social media! Thank you!
Each month, we will feature a member of the MCWG and have a brief Q&A!
This month please enjoy our highlight of Prof. Dr. Adriana Tavares, member of the MCWG Steering Committee.
Professor Adriana Tavares is a leading expert in translational molecular imaging at the University of Edinburgh, where she holds a Personal Chair in the Deanery of Clinical Sciences. She also serves as the Head of the Preclinical PET Facility within the Centre for Cardiovascular Science and is affiliated with Edinburgh Imaging. Her research focuses on the development of novel PET radiotracers and advanced image analysis techniques to enhance disease diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment monitoring. Her team is particularly engaged in creating molecular imaging biomarkers and kinetic modeling tools for whole-body PET studies. At the University of Edinburgh, she established the “PET is Wonderful” initiative, aimed at fostering collaboration and innovation in PET imaging research. She is an active member of the European Society of Molecular Imaging (ESMI) and co-chairs its STANDARD group. Additionally, she contributes to the Scottish Imaging Network: A Platform for Scientific Excellence (SINAPSE) and co-leads the UK PET Network’s preclinical subgroup. Professor Tavares has secured significant research funding, including a £1.93 million MRC award for developing the TSPO PET radiotracer [18F]LW223, aimed at detecting regional tissue inflammation. Her extensive publication record and leadership in the field underscore her commitment to advancing molecular imaging technologies for improved healthcare outcomes.
Prof Dr Adriana Tavares has graciously responded to our feature questionnaire:
What sparked your interest in molecular imaging or led you to focus on research in molecular imaging?
My first contact with Nuclear Medicine was when I started my BSc on that topic. I started my degree knowing I wanted to continue studying science, but I wasn’t quite sure how Nuclear Medicine worked and what could be done with radiotracers. As soon as my BSc classes started, I was completely hooked! I loved the idea of being able to look and quantify what is going on inside our cells in our bodies. This was my “Eureka” moment and, from that point onwards, I was sure that was the right career for me.
What is your role in the Molecular Connectivity Working Group, and what have you been contributing to or working on within the group?
I’m currently a member of the Molecular Connectivity Working Group and have been contributing with presentations on preclinical network analysis of PET datasets.
In what ways do you imagine molecular connectivity will advance our understanding of brain function?
I think it has already advanced our understanding of brain function over the years and, as new methodology comes to fore, I expect the impact to increase. For example, I envision a scenario where brain-body connectivity could inform how the multiple body systems are controlled by the brain and vice-versa.
What do you think are the most important challenges in current brain connectivity research, or which unsolved/underappreciated issues should the community address?
I think an important unaddressed challenge is how the brain connectivity tools could migrate from research into clinical practice. This has not really happened for most (if not all) of the tools and I think it would be worthwhile investigating and addressing the reasons underlying this observation, so the community can move forward from seeing the connectivity tools almost exclusively as research tools to more integrated clinical techniques.
What is your favorite mentoring memory—either a story about a mentor’s impact on you or your impact on a mentee?
One of my mentors once said that developing and communicating innovative tools can only be appreciated by peers and the wider community if well contextualised in terms of background (what exists now) and expected impact (what will change after implementing the new tool), otherwise the message will be lost in translation. At the time, they gave me an unexpected and hard to forget analogy: good science without context is like feeding pearls to pigs.
What scientist or scientific achievement do you most admire?
As a major radionuclide “fan” and a female scientist, I have great admiration for all scientific achievements by Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie.
📝 Multimodal metabolic and functional network signatures for diagnosis of parkinson’s disease: a PET/MR study
In this study, integrated PET/MR and Jensen-Shannon similarity estimation (JSSE) was employed to investigate metabolic/functional network dynamics in Parkinson’s disease (PD).
Read the full study in Scientific Reports.
Key Findings:
📝 Brain networks involved in cancer treatment response: insights from 18F-FDG PET scans
An exploratory retrospective study of two independent cohorts evaluated metabolic brain network scores from pre-treatment 18F-FDG PET scans and their ability to stratify good versus poor responders using ROC analysis (AUC). Longitudinal changes in network scores were assessed across follow-up, and progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) analyses were performed in the melanoma cohort.
Read the full study preprint in Phys Med Bio.
Key Findings:
📝 Test-retest reproducibility of structural and proxy estimates of brain connectivity at rest
This study compared test-retest reproducibility of group-level structural connectivity, functional connectivity, intersubject covariance of regional gray matter volume (GMVcov), and intersubject covariance of regional [18F]Fluorodeoxyglucose uptake (FDGcov) in the same 55 healthy subjects at rest using a simultaneous PET/MRI acquisition protocol.
Read the full study preprint in NeuroImage.
Key Findings:
The MCWG Outreach Council invites you to submit announcements or information about papers, conferences, presentations or other events or news related to brain and molecular connectivity as well as any positions available or job opportunities that you wish to publicize and share with the community!
Please submit any material for consideration by the final day of each month using this form – thank you!
The MCWG is made up of four international and multidisciplinary councils dedicated to promoting molecular connectivity research via dissemination of methods, results, collaboration, and resource sharing (e.g. datasets, tools) within the scientific community. We encourage the neuroscientific community to take an integrative perspective in study of the brain connectome, where various methods including MRI-based techniques, electrophysiological tools, and molecular imaging advance our understanding of the brain. Please find fundamental questions outlined here: “Brain connectomics: time for a molecular imaging perspective?”
Our website can be found here. We also invite you to join the MCWG!
