Examining GABA/glutamate neurotransmitters and functional connectivity in cognitive inhibition tasks

The project aims to estimate how some crucial neurotransmitters (GABA and glutamate) are modulated online, and how information flows in the neural network of inhibition (effective functional connectivity) while people perform motor and cognitive inhibition tasks. Moreover, all the experiments will consider individual differences associated with the obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) spectrum, The project uses cutting-edge methods including high-resolution neuroimaging (fMRI) to locate regions of interest, task-dependent MRI spectroscopy, pair pulse transcraneal magnetic stimulation (pp-TMS) and a new functional diffusion weighted imaging (fDWI) protocol which allows to estimate dynamic changes in white matter anisotropy associated with task performance.