Acquisition of a 3-Tesla Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Scanner for Functional Studies of the Human Brain

这项奖励提供资金，允许华盛顿大学购买一台3T磁共振成像(MRI)扫描仪，用于基础科学脑成像研究。该仪器将被安置在健康科学大楼的一个专门的核磁共振研究设施中，在那里它将支持威斯康星大学30多名基础科学核磁共振用户的主要群体，他们正在进行的研究成功关键取决于能否获得3T核磁共振扫描仪。这些多学科的研究人员来自多个不同的部门，包括心理学、言语和听觉科学、音乐、计算机科学、生理学和生物物理学、语言学、神经外科、神经病学、生物工程和放射学。因此，这个3T设施将为文理学院、教育学院、工程学院、医学学院、健康科学学院、公共卫生学院和研究生院(心理学)的神经科学研究人员提供全校范围的支持。除了目前的MR研究人员，威斯康星大学还有许多其他神经学家表示有兴趣在3T设备可用时用于他们的研究。因此，增加一个3T磁共振成像设备将扩大未来威斯康星州大学的脑功能磁共振研究工作。它也将是来自其他区域机构的研究人员可以使用的资源。脑功能成像(FMRI)是一种重要的新研究工具，用于定义大脑如何运作来控制运动和认知任务，以及这些功能可能如何受到异常发育或疾病的影响。3T磁共振成像将用于许多功能磁共振成像研究，其中一些包括视觉系统分析，以了解大脑如何同时处理各种类型的视觉输入，包括空间信息(位置)以及特征信息(颜色、形状、运动、方向等)，以解释视觉场景。对涉及语言和认知的功能磁共振成像的研究将调查大脑在试错学习过程中如何编码成功和错误，看看这些神经编码事件是否可以用来预测人们学习得有多好。使用结构核磁共振和磁共振波谱(MRS)来测量大脑代谢物变化的神经成像将被用来比较发育正常的幼儿和自闭症儿童的大脑。随着时间的推移(3到10岁)，对灰质和区域体积和化学变化的定量MRI/MRS分析将与行为发育变化相关联，以解决有关大脑发育的时间进程及其与典型和非典型行为的关系的问题。华盛顿大学坚定地致力于跨学科的科学和教育，其证据是强大的跨校园研究联系，跨学科的培训计划，如神经生物学和行为学研究生计划，以及跨学科的研究中心，如综合脑成像中心(IBIC)，学习和脑科学研究所(ILABS)，弗吉尼亚梅里尔布洛德尔听力研究中心(VMBHRC)，人类发育和残疾中心(CHDD)，和华盛顿国家灵长类研究中心(WaNPRC)。拟议的3T设施将沿用这一传统，不仅为学科和跨学科研究提供新的机会，而且还为研究生和研究生培训、教育拓展、招聘神经成像方面的新教员、女学生和研究人员以及来自代表性不足群体的参与提供新的机会。

This award provides funds to permit the University of Washington to acquire a 3T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner for basic-science brain imaging research. This instrument will be housed in a dedicated MRI research facility in the Health Sciences building where it will support a primary group of over 30 basic-science MRI users at UW whose ongoing research success depends critically on access to a 3T MRI scanner. These multidisciplinary researchers originate from multiple different departments that include Psychology, Speech and Hearing Science, Music, Computer Science, Physiology and Biophysics, Linguistics, Neurosurgery, Neurology, Bioengineering and Radiology. Thus, this 3T facility will provide campus-wide support to neuroscience researchers in the Schools of the Arts and Sciences, Education, Engineering, Medicine, the Health Sciences, the School of Public Health and the Graduate School (Psychology). In addition to the current MR researchers, there are many other neuroscientists at UW who have expressed interest in using the 3T facility for their research when available. Thus, addition of a 3T MRI facility will expand the functional brain MRI research efforts at UW in the future. It will also be a resource accessible to researchers from other regional institutions. Functional brain imaging (fMRI) is an important new research tool used to define how the brain operates to control motor and cognitive tasks and how these functions may be affected by abnormal development or disease. The 3T MRI will be utilized for many fMRI studies some of which include visual system analysis to understand how the brain operates to simultaneously process diverse types of visual input that includes spatial information (location) as well as feature information (color, shape, motion, direction, etc) to interpret a visual scene. Studies of fMRI involving language and cognition will investigate how the brain codes successes and errors during trial-and-error learning to see whether these neural coding events can be used to predict how well people learn. Neuroimaging using structural MRI and MR spectroscopy (MRS) to measure brain metabolite changes will be used to compare brains of young children with normal development to those with Autism. Quantitative MRI/MRS analyses of grey matter and regional volumetric and chemical changes over time (age 3 to age 10) will be correlated with behavioral developmental changes to address questions regarding the time course of brain development and its relationship to typical and atypical behavior.The University of Washington is strongly committed to interdisciplinary science and education, as evidenced by strong cross-campus research ties, interdisciplinary training programs such as the Graduate Program in Neurobiology and Behavior, and discipline-spanning research centers such as the Integrated Brain Imaging Center (IBIC), Institute for Learning and Brain Science (ILABS), Virginia Merrill Bloedel Hearing Research Center (VMBHRC), Center on Human Development and Disability (CHDD), and Washington National Primate Research Center (WaNPRC). The proposed 3T facility will operate in this tradition, providing new opportunities not only for disciplinary and cross-disciplinary research, but also for graduate and post-graduate training, educational outreach, recruitment of new faculty in neuroimaging, and involvement by female students and researchers, and those from underrepresented groups.