Grant period: 01/04-2020 to 31/03-2022.
Summary: The aim of this Carlsberg Foundation Internationalisation Fellowship is to reliably predict brain dynamics in depression using big neuroimaging datasets. The datasets that we will use will be obtained from sharing of data across 13 neuroimaging centers worldwide. The importance of data sharing has increasingly been acknowledged by the neuroimaging community, as a solution to leverage optimal and maximally powered research, while simultaneously ensuring the rigor and reproducibility of the work. In collaboration with Prof. Poldrack, director of the Center for Reproducible Neuroscience at Stanford University, we propose to probe an important and pertinent question that so far has suffered from replication issues, namely whether serotonin transporter binding is abnormal in patients with major depressive disorder. The proposed project will highlight the major benefits of sharing data and allow for better understanding of the human brain in major depression. Specifically, the proposed project will 1. reliably predict whether serotonin transporter availability is abnormal in patients with major depressive disorder, and 2. test the reproducibility of previously published serotonin transporter PET studies investigating major depressive disorder, had a different analysis method been applied to the data.