Murat Yildirim, PhD, member of Case CCC’s Cancer Imaging Program and assistant staff in the Department of Neurosciences at Cleveland Clinic, recently visited the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center to share his research at the intersection of neuroscience, neurotechnology, artificial intelligence and cancer neuroscience.
Yildirim's research combines engineering, optics, photonics, behavioral neuroscience and computational approaches to develop new ways of studying brain structure and function. His lab develops custom-made microscopes and computational techniques for large-scale imaging and manipulation of neural circuits in living systems, with applications spanning basic neuroscience and translational research.
Most recently, Yildirim and colleagues were published in Cell Reports Methods for their paper, “DeepFaceMouse enables scalable prediction of large-scale brain activity from facial dynamics in mice.” Led by undergraduate first author Kemal Ozdemirli, the study introduces an artificial intelligence and computer vision framework that uses subtle facial movements to predict brain activity. The researchers validated the approach across multiple calcium indicators, behavioral settings—including spontaneous behavior, virtual reality and social interaction—and disease models including glioblastoma, autism spectrum disorder and multiple sclerosis.
The work demonstrates how facial dynamics could provide a noninvasive window into brain-wide neural activity and represents a step toward AI-driven digital biomarkers of brain function and neurological disease. The DeepFaceMouse software and graphical user interface are also openly available to the research community, enabling other investigators to apply and build on the technology.
At UCSF, Yildirim presented two talks on this broader body of work—one to neurosurgeons and clinicians and another to the neuroscience research community. The visit provided an opportunity to discuss how advances in imaging, AI and neurotechnology could help bridge fundamental neuroscience discoveries with challenges faced by patients, including those with brain tumors.