Courtesy of Prof Lars Muckli, this image shows a surface reconstruction of human visual cortex overlaid with grid lines depicting cortical depths from superficial (red) to deep (purple) layers. Using high-field, high-resolution fMRI at 7 Tesla, Prof Muckli’s group showed for the first time that the brain’s internal representations of the world are fed back to superficial layers of sensory cortex.

The study, published in Current Biology, was conducted in collaboration with the University of Minnesota’s Center for Magnetic Resonance Research. The first 7T clinical MRI scanner in the SINAPSE network will open later this year at the new Imaging Centre of Excellence at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital Glasgow.