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Why Reproducible fMRI Is the Key to the Future of Mental Health
July 10, 2025
In a wide-ranging conversation with Peter Bandettini on the Neurosalience podcast, Michael P. Milham, MD, PhD shares a vision for how brain imaging can move from exploratory research into real-world clinical impact.
Dr. Milham, Chief Science Officer at the Child Mind Institute, describes the need for large-scale, open-access neuroimaging data, like those pioneered in the ADHD-200 and Healthy Brain Network initiatives, to capture the true diversity of the human brain. He stresses that reliability, not novelty, is now the field’s central challenge. Variability across processing pipelines threatens progress unless we commit to rigorous standards and transparency.
The conversation explores how deep phenotyping, AI, and real-world data streams (from wearables to electronic health records) can help move the field toward individualized insights—shifting away from group averages to tools that clinicians can trust at the person level.
The take-home message? The future of brain health lies in radical collaboration, open data, and methodological rigor.
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Tagged with:
Healthy Brain Network
Topic:
Science
