image: Brain Conectivity is the new neuroscience journal publishing cutting-edge basic and clinical research contributing to a better understanding of brain mapping and connections. view more
Credit: © 2011, Mary Ann Liebert Inc., publishers
New Rochelle, NY, April 21, 2011— The new neuroscience journal, Brain Connectivity, set to become the premier source of cutting-edge basic and clinical research contributing to a better understanding of how structural and functional connections in the brain are organized, develop, and are altered in neurological disorders, launches with the publication of four compelling articles. The full issue will be released in early May. Brain Connectivity, a bimonthly peer-reviewed journal, is published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. (www.liebertpub.com). The articles and a full description of the Journal and its editorial leadership are available online at www.liebertpub.com/brain
To ensure that scientific findings are rapidly disseminated, each article will be published Instant Online within 72 hours of acceptance, with fully typeset, fast-track publication within 4 weeks.
Brain Connectivity will be the journal of record for researchers and clinicians interested in all aspects of brain connectivity. The Journal is under the leadership of founding and Co-Editors-in-Chief Christopher Pawela, PhD, assistant professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin, and Bharat Biswal, PhD, associate professor at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. The Journal will include original peer-reviewed papers, review articles, point-counterpoint discussions on controversies in the field, and a product/technology review section.
"Powerful new neuroimaging methods have opened up exciting opportunities to characterize brain connectivity in unprecedented detail," says David C. Van Essen, PhD, Professor and Head, Anatomy and Neurobiology, Neurosciences Program, Washington University in St. Louis and former President of the Society for Neuroscience. "This new journal provides an excellent venue for communicating discoveries about brain circuits and brain networks to a broad, multidisciplinary audience."
In the first of four articles, Karl Friston, University College London (UK), offers a comprehensive and controversial review of the fundamental issues of connectivity in the field of brain imaging. The article provides a brief history of functional connectivity, describes the differences between functional and effective connectivity, and presents recent advances in research aimed at modeling the activity of neurologic networks in the brain.
Kathryn Cullen and colleagues from University of Minnesota Medical School, University of Minnesota, and University of California, Los Angeles, present the results of a study that compared functional connectivity of the amygdala (a brain region involved in processing emotions and storing memories) in 12 women with the psychiatric condition Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and in 12 healthy volunteers. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of the women's brains showed specific differences in connectivity between the amygdala and other brain regions among the two groups of women that could explain the emotional dysregulation characteristic of BPD.
Using magnetoencephalographic (MEG) data to reconstruct brain activity, Dante Mantini and coauthors from G. D'Annunzio University (Italy), K.U. Leuven Medical School (Belgium), and Washington University (St. Louis, MO) developed a signal processing pipeline capable of distinguishing between brain components and artifacts and of applying the data to generate MEG resting state networks.
Finally, Kenichi Oishi and a team of researchers from Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD), The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas), Heinrich-Heine-University of Düsseldorf (Germany), RWTH Aachen University (Germany), University of California, Los Angeles, and McGill University (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), describe diffusion tensor imaging studies of white matter in the brains of humans and macaques. Specifically, their research focuses on short structures called U-fibers, which connect adjacent ridges on the cerebral cortex and are believed to be part of functional networks in the brain.
Several additional articles will be published in the Journal online in the near future, including an important review article by Marcus Raichle, Washington University School of Medicine (St. Louis, MO), "The Restless Brain," which explores the relationship between the ongoing, intrinsic activity of the brain, and brain architecture and organization.
"Brain connectivity is a hot area of science right now," says Christopher Pawela, PhD, Co-Editor-in-Chief. "Our goal with the Journal is to help steer the discipline, ensuring that the field grows properly and consistently, making certain that there is a common directionality and purpose, and to develop a communal language among researchers."
Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative medical and biomedical peer-reviewed journals, including Journal of Neurotrauma. Its biotechnology trade magazine, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN), was the first in its field and is today the industry's most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm's 60 journals, newsmagazines, and books is available at our website (www.liebertpub.com).
Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. 140 Huguenot Street, New Rochelle, NY 10801-5215 www.liebertpub.com
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Journal
Brain Connectivity