Leonardo Cerliani

“Nothing defines the function of a neuron better than its connections” M. Mesulam

Bio

My work revolves around mapping, investigating, and understanding brain connectivity using MRI. In this context, I gained extensive experience in preprocessing and analyzing diffusion-weighted data, particularly for tractography, as well as resting-state and task-based fMRI.

During my initial postdoc at UMCG, I devised the methodology of brain connectivity gradients within the context of a study on the insular cortex. Later, at the NIN, I investigated patterns of atypical subcortico-cortical brain connectivity in Autism and collaborated on other studies of brain connectivity in various neurological and neuropsychiatric conditions. During my period at the ICM in Paris, I worked on MRI-based primate connectivity and began to develop an interest in analytics and data engineering in neuroimaging beyond scientific research questions.

Back in The Netherlands, I continued working on neuroimaging in several projects: deep learning for neuropsychiatry (AMC), functional connectivity in Misophonia (UvA), and sub-millimeter fMRI in social cognition (SBL – NIN). Concurrently, I deepened my interest in engineering problems related to the organization and analysis of big data.

In my current project at the Social Brain Lab, I am implementing Representational Similarity Analysis on fMRI and behavioral data to investigate how different aspects of emotion observation are represented in various cortical regions involved in social cognition.

Representative Publications

• Probabilistic tractography recovers a rostrocaudal trajectory of connectivity variability in the human insular cortex
• Increased Functional Connectivity Between Subcortical and Cortical Resting-State Networks in Autism Spectrum Disorder
• Connectivity-based parcellation of the macaque frontal cortex, and its relation with the cytoarchitectonic distribution described in current atlases
• Atypically high influence of subcortical activity on primary sensory regions in autism