Structural and probabilistic methods for group analysis in functional neuroimaging

Neuroimaging is currently the main modality for the non-invasive exploration of brain structure and function. In this presentation, we will focus on Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) that is the only modality that provides a spatially-resolved and full coverage of the brain volume. The use of such data to better understand brain function or to diagnose various brain diseases has to face two main issues: i) dealing with heterogeneous informations such as tissue segmentation obtained through anatomical MRI, functional region characterization obtained in functional MRI and connectivity measures obtained in diffusion MRI; ii) making meaningful between-subject comparison, in spite of the impressive variability of brain shapes across individuals. We will present how to build models of brain organization while accounting for between-individual variability with various statistical tools. Finally, we will show how we address the modelling of between subjects variability by comparing neuroimaging measures to behavioural and genetic information that also characterize inter-individual variability.