Movie-Watching Functional MRI for Mapping Brain Function in Neurosurgical Patients

June 11, 2026 updated by: Yanmei, Tie, Brigham and Women's Hospital

Naturalistic Neuroimaging for Neurosurgical Brain Mapping

We are doing this research to compare a new type of functional MRI (fMRI) called naturalistic viewing (also called movie watching) to standard clinical fMRI techniques. Standard clinical fMRI currently uses multiple tasks such as reading and responding to words or sentences to determine which areas of the brain are responsible for language. Surgeons can use this information to help plan brain surgeries. We hope to determine if the movie-watching fMRI is equivalent or better than the standard task-based fMRI. If so, it could be useful for planning patients' surgeries in the future, without the need for multiple tasks.

Study Overview

Status

Not yet recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Estimated)

90

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Contact

Study Contact Backup

Study Locations

  • United States
    • Massachusetts
      • Boston, Massachusetts, United States, 02115
        • Brigham and Women's Hospital
        • Contact:
        • Contact:
        • Principal Investigator:
          • Yanmei Tie, PhD

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Any sex, age between 21 to 70 years;
  • Known or suspected glioma (lesion) of the brain;
  • English speaking;
  • Patients with clinical fMRI scheduled (or pending scheduling) for presurgical planning at BWH ordered by a BWH clinician;
  • Passes prescreening and standard of care screenings for 3 Tesla MRI;
  • Willing to participate in the additional study scan and neuropsychological assessment visit;
  • Informed consent form signed by the subject or legally acceptable representative.

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Contraindications to MRI: Note: MRI screening will be performed by radiology staff as part of their standard process for their clinical scans and if subjects do not pass the screen, MRI will not be performed.
  • Pregnancy or possible pregnancy: Female participants under 55 (or 45 with menstrual cycle in the past 12 months) who may be pregnant. Per policy: potential subjects will be asked if they are pregnant and excluded if they say yes. If unsure, pregnancy testing will be performed. Any subjects with positive result will be excluded.

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Diagnostic
  • Allocation: N/A
  • Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: FMRI and Neuropsychological Assessments
Other: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a type of non-invasive imaging that measures blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal changes in the brain when a task is performed (such as reading) or BOLD signal changes during resting or watching naturalistic stimuli (such as movie clips).
Other Names:
  • fMRI
Behavioral: Neuropsychological Assessments
Neuropsychological assessments are standardized tests used to evaluate cognitive, behavioral, and emotional functions that reflect the performance of different brain systems. These tests can be on paper or on a computer.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Language localization
Time Frame: From enrollment to up to 6 months after brain surgery.
Sensitivity and specificity based on the proportion of activation within and outside of language regions-of-interest (ROIs).
From enrollment to up to 6 months after brain surgery.
Language lateralization
Time Frame: From enrollment to up to 6 months after brain surgery.
Laterality index (LI) based on proportion of activation in the left vs. right hemisphere in language regions-of-interest (ROIs).
From enrollment to up to 6 months after brain surgery.
FMRI language activations concordance with language fiber tracts
Time Frame: From enrollment to up to 6 months after brain surgery.
Concordance with language fiber tracts identified by diffusion MRI in terms of the Euclidean distance between fMRI language activations and the tracts.
From enrollment to up to 6 months after brain surgery.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Quality metrics based on electrocortical stimulation (ECS)
Time Frame: From enrollment to up to 6 months after brain surgery.
Sensitivity and specificity computed relative to ECS positive/negative areas.
From enrollment to up to 6 months after brain surgery.

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Brigham and Women's Hospital

Collaborators

National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Yanmei Tie, PhD, Brigham and Women's Hospital

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Estimated)

September 1, 2026

Primary Completion (Estimated)

March 31, 2029

Study Completion (Estimated)

March 31, 2029

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

June 11, 2026

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

June 11, 2026

First Posted (Actual)

June 16, 2026

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

June 16, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

June 11, 2026

Last Verified

June 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 2026P001172
  • R01DC020965 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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