Improving personalized models of fMRI recordings including individual region-specific HRF in The Virtual Brain

The Virtual Brain (TVB) is a neuroinformatics platform for the simulation of the dynamics of large-scale brain networks with biologically realistic connectivity. However, the fMRI data modeling performed by TVB suffers from the drawback of considering a standard model for the underlying Hemodynamic Response Function (HRF), throughout a brain and across various brain models. Several studies have indicated that HRF shows variability across both the subjects and across various brain regions of a particular subject. To account for the same, we aim at extending the rsHRF-toolbox to interface between estimating region-specific resting-state HRF (rsHRF) from fMRI data, and modeling BOLD activity in TVB. The extended toolbox shall take fMRI data as input, estimate the region-specific rsHRF for regions (network nodes) defined by the connectome used in TVB, and mediate the fMRI data simulations through TVB's Bold monitor and BoldRegionROI monitor while accounting for the underlying HRF variability across the network. We also aim to build a GUI interface for the toolbox and consequently a docker implementation for the same as we expect end-users from various communities and backgrounds.