Anna Custo

• PhD at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Over the last decade, EEG resting-state microstate analysis has evolved from a niche existence to a widely used and well-accepted methodology. The rapidly increasing body of empirical findings started to yield overarching patterns of associations of biological and psychological states and traits with specific microstate classes. However, currently,...

Background: Atypical neural processing of social visual information contributes to impaired social cognition in autism spectrum disorder. However, evidence for early developmental alterations in neural processing of social contingencies is scarce. Most studies in the literature have been conducted in older children and adults. Here, we aimed to inv...

Carriers of the rare 22q11.2 microdeletion present with a high percentage of positive and negative symptoms and a high genetic risk for schizophrenia. Visual processing impairments have been characterized in schizophrenia, but less so in 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome (DS). Here, we focus on visual processing using high-density EEG and source imaging in...

Using EEG to elucidate the spontaneous activation of brain resting state networks is non trivial as the signal of interest is of low amplitude and it is difficult to distinguish the underlying neural sources. Using the principles of electric field topographical analysis, it is possible to estimate the meta-stable states of the brain (i.e., the rest...

Previous studies have repeatedly found altered temporal characteristics of EEG microstates in schizophrenia. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether adolescents affected by the 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS), known to have a 30 fold increased risk to develop schizophrenia, already show deviant EEG microstates. If this is the ca...

Relating measures of electroencephalography (EEG) back to the underlying sources is a long-standing inverse problem. Here we propose a new method to estimate the EEG sources of identified electrophysiological states that represent spontaneous activity, or are evoked by a stimulus, or caused by disease or disorder. Our method has the unique advantag...

In order to investigate EEG biomarkers of auditory processing for schizophrenia, we studied a group with a well known high-risk profile: patients with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome have a 30% risk of developing schizophrenia during adulthood. We performed high-density EEG source imaging to measure auditory gating of the P50 component and middle to late...

We describe the validation of an anatomical brain atlas approach to the analysis of diffuse optical tomography (DOT). Using MRI data from 32 subjects, we compare the diffuse optical images of simulated cortical activation reconstructed using a registered atlas with those obtained using a subject's true anatomy. The error in localization of the simu...

We are validating the use of a brain atlas for analyzing NIRS data of brain activation to guide anatomical interpretation of the NIRS results when the subject’s true head anatomy is not available.

We describe a neuroimaging protocol that utilizes an anatomical atlas of the human head to guide diffuse optical tomography of human brain activation. The protocol is demonstrated by imaging the hemodynamic response to median-nerve stimulation in three healthy subjects, and comparing the images obtained using a head atlas with the images obtained u...

Diffuse Optical Tomography (DOT) is a relatively new method used to image blood volume and oxygen saturation in vivo. Because of its relatively poor spatial resolution (typically no better than 1-2 cm), DOT is increasingly combined with other imaging techniques, such as MRI, fMRI and CT, which provide high-resolution structural information to guide...

We present two wide-field (≈5' × 35), diffraction-limited (λ/D 05 at 10 μm), broadband 10 and 20 μm images of the Orion Nebula, plus six 7–13 μm narrowband (λ/Δλ 1) images of the BN/KL complex taken at the 3.8 m UKIRT telescope with the MPIA MAX camera. The wide-field images, centered on the Trapezium and BN/KL regions, are mosaics of 35'' × 35'' f...

An efficient computation of the time-dependent forward solution for photon transport in a head model is a key capability for performing accurate inversion for functional diffuse optical imaging of the brain. The diffusion approximation to photon transport is much faster to simulate than the physically correct radiative transport equation (RTE); how...

We investigated the depth of systemic oscillations, as the heartbeat, always present in the optical signal. To this aim we performed measurements in the head of humans and piglets using frequency domain and time domain systems. Measurements in piglets and Monte Carlo simulations have also been used towards explaining the experimental data. Prelimin...

Two well-known forward models for light propagation in adult human head are compared: Monte Carlo and Finite-Difference. The main advantage of a diffusion based method is the low computational cost at the expenses of accuracy.

In a series of previous papers we have proposed and validated an iterative method, known as the projected Landweber method, for the restoration of astronomical images taken in chopping and nodding mode. While the method generally provides good results, it may also generate artifacts related to the huge non-uniqueness of the solution of the restorat...

Ground-based astronomical observations at mid-infrared wavelengths (around 10-20 microns) face the problem of extracting the weak astronomical signal from the large background due to atmosphere and telescope emission. The solution is provided by a differential technique, known as chopping and nodding, which can be modeled as the application of a se...

this paper we present a new high-resolution 10 m image of the BN/KL region obtained on UKIRT in diraction limited conditions

this paper we present a new high-resolution 10 m image of the BN/KL region obtained on UKIRT in di#raction limited conditions