Richard Henson

University of Cambridge | Cam · Department of Psychiatry

Neural activity cannot be directly observed using fMRI; rather it must be inferred from the hemodynamic responses that neural activity causes. Solving this inverse problem is made possible through the use of forward models, which generate predicted hemodynamic responses given hypothesised underlying neural activity. Commonly‐used hemodynamic models...

This study assesses the reliability of resting‐state dynamic causal modelling (DCM) of magnetoencephalography (MEG) under conductance‐based canonical microcircuit models, in terms of both posterior parameter estimates and model evidence. We use resting‐state MEG data from two sessions, acquired 2 weeks apart, from a cohort with high between‐subject...

Introduction: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia. Non-invasive, affordable, and largely available biomarkers that are able to identify patients at a prodromal stage of AD are becoming essential, especially in the context of new disease-modifying therapies. Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a critical stage preceding deme...

In neuroimaging research, tracking individuals over time is key to understanding the interplay between brain changes and genetic, environmental, or cognitive factors across the lifespan. Yet, the extent to which we can estimate the individual trajectories of brain change over time with precision remains uncertain. In this study, we estimated the re...

The binding of information from different sensory or neural sources is critical for associative memory. Previous research in animals suggested that the timing of theta oscillations in the hippocampus is critical for long-term potentiation, which underlies associative and episodic memory. Studies with human participants showed correlations between t...

Alzheimer's disease affects our cognitive neurophysiology by loss of neurones, synapses and neurotransmitters. An improved mechanistic understanding of the human disease will facilitate new treatments. To this end, biophysically-informed dynamic causal models can support inferences around laminar and cell-specific disease effects from human non-inv...

INTRODUCTION Entorhinal cortex (EC) is the first cortical region to exhibit neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's disease (AD), associated with EC grid cell dysfunction. Given the role of grid cells in path integration (PI)–based spatial behaviors, we predicted that PI impairment would represent the first behavioral change in adults at risk of AD. METH...

Functional compensation is a common notion in the neuroscience of healthy ageing, whereby older adults are proposed to recruit additional brain activity to compensate for reduced cognitive function. However, whether this additional brain activity in older participants actually helps their cognitive performance remains debated. We examined brain act...

Functional compensation is a common notion in the neuroscience of healthy ageing, whereby older adults are proposed to recruit additional brain activity to compensate for reduced cognitive function. However, whether this additional brain activity in older participants actually helps their cognitive performance remains debated. We examined brain act...

Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging (dMRI) is sensitive to white matter microstructural changes across the human lifespan. Several models have been proposed to provide more sensitive and specific metrics than those provided by the conventional Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) analysis. However, previous results using different metrics have led to co...

Healthy aging is typically accompanied by cognitive decline. Previous work has shown that engaging in multiple, non-work activities during midlife can have a protective effect on cognition several decades later, rendering it less dependent on brain structural health; the definition of “cognitive reserve”. Other work has shown that increasing age is...

Functional compensation is a common notion in the neuroscience of healthy ageing, whereby older adults are proposed to recruit additional brain activity to compensate for reduced cognitive function. However, whether this additional brain activity in older participants actually helps their cognitive performance remains debated. We examined brain act...

Neural activity cannot be directly observed using fMRI; rather it must be inferred from the haemodynamic responses that neural activity causes. Solving this inverse problem is made possible through the use of forward models, which generate predicted haemodynamic responses given hypothesised underlying neural activity. Commonly-used haemodynamic mod...

During the past decade, cognitive neuroscience has been calling for population diversity to address the challenge of validity and generalizability, ushering in a new era of population neuroscience. The developing Chinese Color Nest Project (devCCNP, 2013–2022), the first ten-year stage of the lifespan CCNP (2013–2032), is a two-stages project focus...

Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging (dMRI) is sensitive to white matter (WM) changes across the human lifespan. Several models have been proposed to provide more specific metrics than those provided by the conventional Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) analysis. However, previous results using different metrics have led to contradictory conclusions r...

Healthy aging is typically accompanied by cognitive decline. Previous work has shown that engaging in multiple, non-work activities during midlife can have a protective effect on cognition several decades later, rendering it less dependent on brain structural health; the definition of “cognitive reserve”. Other work has shown that increasing age is...

Novel experiences appear to benefit memory for unrelated information encoded shortly before or after the novel experience, in both rodents and humans. In contrast, other research has suggested that memory is impaired when encoding is followed by an effortful task, as opposed to simply resting. This apparent discrepancy in the literature may explain...

Introduction Stakeholder engagement remains scarce in basic brain research. However, it can greatly improve the relevance of investigations and accelerate the translation of study findings to policy. The Lifebrain consortium investigated risk and protective factors influencing brain health using cognition, lifestyle and imaging data from European c...

The binding of information from different sensory or neural sources is critical for associative memory. Previous research in animals suggested that the timing of theta oscillations in the hippocampus is critical for long-term potentiation, which underlies associative and episodic memory. Studies with human participants showed correlations between t...

Background Depressed individuals show attentional biases in the processing of emotional stimuli, such as negative face expressions. Some of these biases persist in previously depressed individuals, but their mechanisms remain largely unknown. Methods A population-derived cohort (n = 134, 68 females; 21 - 92 years) was recruited by Cam-CAN. Function...

The entorhinal cortex (EC) is the first cortical region to exhibit neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), associated with EC grid cell dysfunction. Given the role of grid cells in path integration, we predicted that path integration impairment would represent the first behavioural change in adults at-risk of AD. Using immersive virtual real...

Cardiovascular ageing contributes to cognitive impairment. However, the unique and synergistic contributions of multiple cardiovascular factors to cognitive function remain unclear because they are often condensed into a single composite score or examined in isolation. We hypothesized that vascular risk factors, electrocardiographic features and bl...

The preservation of cognitive function in old age is a public health priority. Cerebral hypoperfusion is a hallmark of dementia but its impact on maintaining cognitive ability across the lifespan is less clear. We investigated the relationship between baseline cerebral blood flow (CBF) and blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) response during a...

Introduction With the pressing need to develop treatments that slow or stop the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, new tools are needed to reduce clinical trial duration and validate new targets for human therapeutics. Such tools could be derived from neurophysiological measurements of disease. Methods and analysis The New Therapeutics in Alzheim...

The entorhinal cortex (EC) is the first cortical brain region to exhibit neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Given that the EC contains unique grid cells underpinning path integration, tests probing this aspect of navigation may have added value in detecting AD in its earliest preclinical stages. Building on our past work showing that a...

Cognitive tests sensitive to the integrity of the medial temporal lobe (MTL), such as mnemonic discrimination of perceptually similar stimuli, may be useful early markers of risk for cognitive decline in older populations. Perceptual discrimination of stimuli with overlapping features also relies on MTL, but remains relatively unexplored in this co...

Localising the sources of MEG/EEG signals often requires a structural MRI to create a head model, while ensuring reproducible scientific results requires sharing data and code. However, sharing structural MRI data often requires the face go be hidden to help protect the identity of the individuals concerned. While automated de-facing methods exist,...

The schema-linked interactions between medial prefrontal and medial temporal lobe (SLIMM) model predicts that memory for object locations is a U-shaped function of the expectancy of those locations. Using immersive virtual reality, we presented participants with 20 objects in locations that varied in their congruency with a kitchen schema. Bayes fa...

It is well documented that some brain regions, such as association cortices, caudate, and hippocampus, are particularly prone to age-related atrophy, but it has been hypothesized that there are individual differences in atrophy profiles. Here, we document heterogeneity in regional-atrophy patterns using latent-profile analysis of 1,482 longitudinal...

Stimulus repetition normally causes reduced neural activity in brain regions that process that stimulus. Some theories claim that this “repetition suppression” reflects local mechanisms such as neuronal fatigue or sharpening within a region, whereas other theories claim that it results from changed connectivity between regions, following changes in...

Fast mapping (FM) is a hypothetical, incidental learning process that allows rapid acquisition of new words. Using an implicit reaction time measure in a FM paradigm, Coutanche and Thompson‐Schill (2014) showed evidence of lexical competition within 10 minutes of nonwords being learned as names of unknown items, consistent with same‐day lexicalisat...

Stimulus repetition normally causes reduced neural activity in brain regions that process that stimulus. Some theories claim that this “repetition suppression” reflects local mechanisms such as neuronal fatigue or sharpening within a region, whereas other theories claim that it results from changed connectivity between regions, following changes in...

Recent experimental and theoretical work has supported geometric theories of conceptual representation, where concepts are defined as regions in an abstract n-dimensional space, with each dimension specifying a certain characteristic. A key question in cognitive neuroscience concerns the generalisation of information between such concepts, i.e., ho...

Cognitive tests sensitive to the integrity of the medial temporal lobe (MTL), such as mnemonic discrimination of perceptually similar stimuli, may be useful early markers of risk for cognitive decline in older populations. Perceptual discrimination of stimuli with overlapping features also relies on MTL, but remains relatively unexplored in this co...

Early detection of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is vital to reduce the burden of dementia and for developing effective treatments. Neuroimaging can detect early brain changes, such as hippocampal atrophy in Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), a prodromal state of AD. However, selecting the most informative imaging features by machine-learning requires man...

Localising the sources of MEG/EEG signals often requires a structural MRI to create a head model, while ensuring reproducible scientific results requires sharing data and code. However, sharing of structural MRI data often requires removal of the face to help protect the identity of the individuals concerned. While automated de-facing methods exist...

Over the past few decades, neuroimaging has become a ubiquitous tool in basic research and clinical studies of the human brain. However, no reference standards currently exist to quantify individual differences in neuroimaging metrics over time, in contrast to growth charts for anthropometric traits such as height and weight ¹ . Here we assemble an...

Brain connectivity analyses have conventionally relied on statistical relationship between one-dimensional summaries of activation in different brain areas. However, summarizing activation patterns within each area to a single dimension ignores the potential statistical dependencies between their multi-dimensional activity patterns. Representationa...

Early detection of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is essential for developing effective treatments. Neuroimaging techniques like Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) have the potential to detect brain changes before symptoms emerge. Structural MRI can detect atrophy related to AD, but it is possible that functional changes are observed even earlier. We there...

Vascular, cardiovascular and neurovascular ageing processes contribute to cognitive impairment. However, the unique and synergistic contributions of cardiovascular factors to cognitive function remain unclear because they are often condensed into a single composite score or examined in isolation of each other. We hypothesized that vascular risk fac...

The experience of novelty can enhance memory for information that occurs close in time, even if not directly related to the experience – a phenomenon called “behavioural tagging”. For example, an animal exposed to a novel spatial environment shows improved memory for other information presented previously. This has been linked to neurochemical modu...

Semantic knowledge is supported by numerous brain regions, but the spatiotemporal configuration of the network that links these areas remains an open question. The hub-and-spokes model posits that a central semantic hub coordinates this network. In this study, we explored distinct aspects that define a semantic hub, as reflected in the spatiotempor...

With increasing life span and prevalence of dementia, it is important to understand the mechanisms of cognitive aging. Here, we focus on a subgroup of the population we term "cognitively frail," defined by reduced cognitive function in the absence of subjective memory complaints, or a clinical diagnosis of dementia. Cognitive frailty is distinct fr...

The preservation of cognitive function into old age is a public health priority. Cerebral hypoperfusion is a hallmark of dementia but its impact on maintaining cognitive ability across the lifespan is less clear. We investigated the relationship between baseline cerebral blood flow (CBF) and blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) response during...

Brain age is a widely used index for quantifying individuals’ brain health as deviation from a normative brain aging trajectory. Higher-than-expected brain age is thought partially to reflect above-average rate of brain aging. Here, we explicitly tested this assumption in two independent large test datasets (UK Biobank [main] and Lifebrain [replica...

The thickness and surface area of cortex are genetically distinct aspects of brain structure, and may be affected differently by age. However, their potential to differentially predict age and cognitive abilities has been largely overlooked, likely because they are typically aggregated into the commonly used measure of volume . In a large sample of...

Older adults tend to display greater brain activation in the non-dominant hemisphere during even basic sensorimotor responses. It is debated whether this Hemispheric Asymmetry Reduction in Older Adults (HAROLD) reflects a compensatory mechanism. Across two independent fMRI experiments involving adult-lifespan human samples (N = 586 and N = 81; appr...

The arrival of submillimeter ultra high-field fMRI makes it possible to compare activation profiles across cortical layers. However, the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal measured by gradient echo (GE) fMRI is biased toward superficial layers of the cortex, which is a serious confound for laminar analysis. Several univariate and multi...

A central debate in the systems neuroscience of memory concerns whether different medial temporal lobe (MTL) structures support different processes in recognition memory. Using two recognition memory paradigms, we tested a rare patient (MH) with a perirhinal lesion that appeared to spare the hippocampus. Consistent with a similar previous case, MH...

Higher socio-economic status (SES) has been proposed to have facilitating and protective effects on brain and cognition. We ask whether relationships between SES, brain volumes and cognitive ability differ across cohorts, by age and national origin. European and US cohorts covering the lifespan were studied (4–97 years, N = 500 000; 54 000 w/brain...

Young people exhibit a negative BOLD response in ipsilateral primary motor cortex (M1) when making unilateral movements, such as button presses. This negative BOLD response becomes more positive as people age. In this study, we investigated why this occurs, in terms of the underlying effective connectivity and haemodynamics. We applied dynamic caus...

Background: While neuroimaging has provided insights into the formation of episodic memories in relation to voluntary memory recall, less is known about neural mechanisms that cause memories to occur involuntarily, for example as intrusive memories of trauma. Here we investigated brain activity shortly after viewing distressing events as a functio...

Brain connectivity analyses have conventionally relied on statistical relationship between one-dimensional summaries of activation in different brain areas. However, summarising activation patterns within each area to a single dimension ignores the potential statistical dependencies between their multi-dimensional activity patterns. Representationa...

Young people exhibit a negative BOLD response in ipsilateral primary motor cortex (M1) when making unilateral movements, such as button presses. This negative BOLD response becomes more positive as people age. Here we investigated why this occurs, in terms of the underlying effective connectivity and haemodynamics. We applied dynamic causal modelli...

Human listeners achieve quick and effortless speech comprehension through computations of conditional probability using Bayes rule. However, the neural implementation of Bayesian perceptual inference remains unclear. Competitive-selection accounts (e.g. TRACE) propose that word recognition is achieved through direct inhibitory connections between u...

When reflecting on the past, some of our strongest memories are for experiences that took us by surprise. Extensive research has backed this intuition that we are more likely to remember surprising moments than mundane ones. But what about the moments leading up to the surprise? Are we more likely to remember those as well? While surprise is a well...

Over the past 25 years, neuroimaging has become a ubiquitous tool in basic research and clinical studies of the human brain. However, there are no reference standards against which to anchor measures of individual differences in brain morphology, in contrast to growth charts for traits such as height and weight. Here, we built an interactive online...

Older adults tend to display greater brain activation in the non-dominant hemisphere during even basic sensorimotor responses. It is debated whether this Hemispheric Asymmetry Reduction in Older Adults (HAROLD) reflects a compensatory mechanism. Across two independent fMRI experiments involving an adult-lifespan human sample (N = 586 and N = 81; ap...

Early detection of Alzheimers Disease (AD) is essential for developing effective treatments. Neuroimaging techniques like Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) have the potential to detect brain changes before symptoms emerge. Structural MRI can detect atrophy related to AD, but it is possible that functional changes are observed even earlier. We theref...

Based on a neuroscientific model of memory (SLIMM), we predicted that people's memory for object locations would be a U-shaped function of the expectancy of those locations. Using immersive virtual reality, we manipulated expectancy by placing twenty familiar objects in locations within a virtual kitchen that were congruent, unrelated or incongruen...

Early detection of Alzheimers Disease (AD) is vital to reduce the burden of dementia and for developing effective treatments. Neuroimaging can detect early brain changes, such as hippocampal atrophy in Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), a prodromal state of AD. However, selecting the most informative imaging features by machine-learning requires many...