Research groups
Colleges
Rogier Mars
Professor of Neurosciences
- MRC Senior Non-clinical Fellow
I explore what it is that makes brains the way they are. Primates, and especially humans, have exceptionally large brains for their body size. Between primates, brains differ in size and in their internal organisation. Why is this? I believe that each brain is an adaptation to the particular environment its owner lives in. I try to understand differences between brains as the result of deviations from ancestral brains that arose to deal with challenges in the environment.
To study these question my group and I use two complementary approaches. First, we study how the human brain is organised and works using a range of non-invasive brain imaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and transcranial magnetic stimulation. Second, we use magnetic resonance imaging to compare the organisation of different brains. We scan the brains from deceased animals to study the size, location, and connections of different brain regions and compare these between species.
Recent publications
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Precon_all: A species-agnostic automated pipeline for non-human cortical surface reconstruction
Preprint
Benn RA. et al, (2025)
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Imaging the structural connectome with hybrid MRI-microscopy tractography.
Journal article
Zhu S. et al, (2025), Med Image Anal, 102
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Comparing mouse and human cingulate cortex organization using functional connectivity.
Journal article
van Hout ATB. et al, (2024), Brain Struct Funct, 229, 1913 - 1925
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Autistic traits foster effective curiosity-driven exploration.
Journal article
Poli F. et al, (2024), PLoS Comput Biol, 20
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Towards multi-modal, multi-species brain atlases: part two.
Journal article
Mars RB. and Palomero-Gallagher N., (2024), Brain Struct Funct