Faculty Directory
Molly Bright

Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Assistant Professor of Physical Therapy and Human Movement Sciences

Contact

645 N Michigan Ave
Suite 1100
Chicago, IL 60611

Email Molly Bright

Website

Bright Lab


Departments

Biomedical Engineering

Education

D.Phil. Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

B.S. Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA

 


Research Interests

Our research uses advanced imaging techniques to assess the interaction of neural activity and vascular physiology in healthy brains and neurological disease. This involves the design and implementation of tools to stimulate or monitor human physiology during MRI scanning, and the development of specialized MRI acquisition methods to characterize neurovascular function. In combination with bespoke signal processing pipelines developed in our lab, we aim to produce robust quantitative imaging biomarkers for studying Multiple Sclerosis, fatigue, migraine, stroke, dementia, spinal cord injury, and the response of individual patients to personalised therapeutic interventions. This work is in collaboration with Physical Therapy and Human Movement Sciences, Neurology, Radiology, the Center for Translational Imaging, and the Northwestern University Interdepartmental Neuroscience program.

 



Selected Publications

Bright MG, Murphy K (2017) Cleaning up the fMRI time series: mitigating noise with advanced acquisition and correction strategies. Neuroimage 154:1-3.

Bright MG, Tench CR, Murphy K (2017) Potential pitfalls in denoising resting state fMRI data using General Linear Models. Neuroimage 154:159-168.

Driver I, Whittaker J, Bright MG, Muthukumaraswamy, S, Murphy K (2016) Arterial CO2 fluctuations modulate neuronal rhythmicity; implications for MEG and fMRI studies of resting state. J Neurosci 36(33):8541-50.

Tewarie P, Bright MG, Hillebrand A, Robson SE, Gascoyne LE, Morris PG, Meier J, Van Mieghem P, Brookes MJ (2016) Predicting haemodynamic networks using electrophysiology: the role of non-linear and cross-frequency interactions. NeuroImage 230:273-292.

Bright MG, Murphy K (2015) Is fMRI "noise" really noise? Resting state nuisance regressors remove variance with network structure. Neuroimage 114:158-169. 

Bright MG, Bianciardi M, de Zwart JA, Murphy K, Duyn JH (2014) Early anti-correlated BOLD signal changes of physiologic origin. Neuroimage 87:287-296.