Core support for the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging

A single mathematical framework is being built to unite every major way of scanning the living human brain—from fMRI and MEG to direct recordings from inside the skull. The problem is that neuroscience currently lacks a common language. Researchers studying a mouse’s local field potentials, a patient’s EEG, and a volunteer’s fMRI scan all use different analytical tools, making it nearly impossible to compare findings or translate animal results into human treatments. This centre aims to create a single, model-based system that can handle all these data types, from animal recordings through to patient studies. If successful, this work would give both fundamental and clinical neuroscience a shared toolkit. The immediate impact is on how research is done—faster, more rigorous comparisons across species and methods. The deeper payoff, however, is tackling the hardest problems in the field: understanding exactly how neuronal function breaks down in common neurological and psychiatric disorders. This is primarily fundamental science, building the conceptual infrastructure that future diagnostics and treatments will depend on.