Kalyan Tripathy

Program: Neurosciences

Current advisor: Joseph P. Culver, PhD

Undergraduate university: University of Pennsylvania

Research summary
Functional neuroimaging has been used to map brain function as well as decode information from brain activity. However, applications like studying early brain development or enabling augmentative communication in patients with severe motor disabilities have been constrained by extant imaging modalities, which can be challenging to use in young children and entail major tradeoffs between logistics and image quality. Diffuse optical tomography (DOT) is an emerging method combining logistical advantages of optical imaging with enhanced image quality. Here, we developed one of the world’s largest DOT systems for high-performance optical brain imaging in children. From visual cortex activity in adults, we decoded the locations of checkerboard stimuli during visual stimulation paradigms, e.g. localizing a 60 wedge rotating through 36 positions with an error of 25.8 +/- 24.7 degrees. Using animated movies as more child-friendly stimuli, we mapped reproducible responses to speech and faces with DOT in awake, typically developing 1-6 year-old children and adults. We then decoded with 80% accuracy which movie a participant was watching or listening to from DOT data. This work lays a valuable foundation for ongoing research with wearable imaging systems and increasingly complex algorithms to map atypical brain development and decode covert semantic information in clinical populations.

Graduate publications
Tripathy K, Markow ZE, Fishell AK, Sherafati A, Burns-Yocum TM, Schroeder ML, Svoboda AM, Eggebrecht AT, Anastasio MA, Schlaggar BL, Culver JP. 2021 Decoding visual information from high-density diffuse optical tomography neuroimaging data. Neuroimage, 226():117516.

Tripathy K, Fishell AK, Markow ZE, Burns-Yocum TM, Newbold DJ, Tripathy P, Schlaggar BL, Culver JP. (2018) Decoding Visual Information from High Density Diffuse Optical Tomography Neuroimaging Data. Optical Society of America Biophotonics Congress, Tucson, AZ, Abstract.