Jessica Cohen (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
Recent advances in neuroimaging methods and analysis have led to an expanding body of research that investigates how large-scale brain network organization dynamically adapts to changes in one's environment, including both internal state changes and external stimulation. In this talk, I will provide examples from my research of both externally-driven and internally-driven changes in functional brain network organization that impact cognitive task performance. First, I will discuss findings that whole-brain network organization dynamically adjusts to changing cognitive demands in a task specific manner, and that individuals whose network organization is more flexible perform better (Cohen & D’Esposito, 2016). Next, I will describe new research in which I find that dynamic changes in network organization during a resting state, when there are no changes in external stimuli, can impact subsequent task performance across multiple cognitive tasks. These findings emphasize the importance of probing the dynamics of functional networks when considering how brain network organization relates to successful cognition.
