Dr. Molly Bright

@brightmg.bsky.social

PI, Applied Neuro-Vascular Imaging Lab @ Northwestern University We translate fMRI to study individual neurovascular function throughout the brain, brainstem, & spinal cord, with an emphasis on movement disorders. brightlab.northwestern.edu

Today was a very good day, and a rather big milestone for me as an academic scientist. I couldn't be more proud of my first three doctoral students, who have taught me so much, and who have such bright futures ahead of them. Congratulations Drs Hemmerling, Reddy, and Zvolanek!

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Breath hold fMRI is great for measuring CVR... *except when your participant or patient doesn't quite perform the task the way you'd like. Let's see if we can fix that! (Spoiler, it looks like we can, using the respiratory belt data to predict or fill in missing PETCO2 data!)

Imaging Neuroscience@imagingneurosci.bsky.social · last yr.

New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Rebecca G. Clements, Molly G. Bright, et al: Quantitative mapping of cerebrovascular reactivity amplitude and delay with breath-hold BOLD fMRI when end-tidal CO2 quality is low doi.org/10.1162/imag...

Huge congratulations to @kjhemm.bsky.social , now officially DOCTOR Hemmerling after a successful powerhouse of a thesis defense! Kim has taken all the stuff I know and love about imaging function and physiology of the human brain, and Made It Work in the cervical spinal cord. Brava, and thank you!

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Now there's a memorable stat! "Colleges and universities are among America’s most competitive international exporters. In dollar terms, last year, the United States sold more educational services to the rest of the world than it sold in natural gas and coal combined." wapo.st/3EvzMCI

Opinion | Trump is killing one of our strongest exports

The president wants to balance U.S. trade deficits? He can’t do it without this industry he hates.

wapo.st

We tell our trainees to really LOOK at their data, every step of the way. This paper takes that wisdom even further, so future external readers really see our neuroimaging results in all their complex glory 👏 Thanks @afni-pt.bsky.social for spearheading this amazing team effort!

Paul Taylor@afni-pt.bsky.social · last yr.

The result of a large (42 authors!) collaboration: "Go Figure: Transparency in neuroscience images preserves context and clarifies interpretation" arxiv.org/abs/2504.07824 TL;DR: The FMRI world can (and should) improve results interpretation and reproducibility *today*, via transparent thresholding.

Northwestern (along with Cornell) appear now also targeted. I don't know what outcome to realistically hope for. I will hug my family extra tight tonight, reach out to my amazing trainees tomorrow, and try to do whatever good research I can do for as long as possible. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/08/u...

Trump Officials Freeze $1 Billion for Cornell and $790 Million for Northwestern

The funding pause amid civil rights investigations into both universities sharply escalates the Trump administration’s campaign against elite colleges.

nytimes.com

Some days, our lab's motto feels like it should be "how could we make fMRI harder?!" 😆 Then I remember that's another way of saying "how could we make fMRI more useful & interpretable?" Here's Michelle, an excellent PhD student translating proximal (e.g. shoulder) motor tasks into chronic stroke 💪

PhD student in a lab adjusting an MRI compatible device for motor tasks in the scanner

I am an extremely proud PI: Huge congratulations to Dr. Kristina Zvolanek and Dr. Neha Reddy, who both successfully defended their doctoral thesis research at Northwestern! They have been central to my lab's creation, defining our collaborative culture and setting high standards. I'm so grateful 🥹

This needs more visibility! While the general public is belatedly getting some sense of the catastrophe caused by not reviewing or funding external grants, DOGE is also completely wiping out the NIH intramural programs, which is just as bad, but is flying under the radar because NIH is gagged.

Jeremy Berg@jeremymberg.bsky.social · last yr.

Compelling pushback from @jmgrohneuro.bsky.social and the Board of Scientific Counselors at the National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH) regarding termination of tenure-track investigators driven by DOGE. 1/2

📢 Calling for submissions to the Special Issue on Open Datasets! 📢 Share your work on open data across key topics, such as: ⚖️ Ethical & legal considerations 🔧 Standards & tools 🌍 Geographical trends 💰 Funding 🌱 Data sustainability & more!

Aperture Neuro@apertureohbm.bsky.social · 2y ago

🚨 Call for Papers: Special Issue on Open Datasets 🚨 Aperture Neuro and Open Science SIG invite submissions in the form of original research, reviews, code, short communications, and more! 🖱️ Visit our website for more details: apertureneuro.org/pages/731-sp...

Hello world! 👋 Looks quite familiar here in bluesky! Not exactly excited to slowly rebuild an online network from scratch, but excited for the fresh start nonetheless. Do say hello!