EAGER: Brain Responses to Visual Stimuli in Sharks Using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI)

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The University of California at San Diego is awarded a grant to develop methods for performing functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) experiments in living sharks in order to study their brains as a complete neural network and provide information on how vertebrate neural systems have both structurally and functionally evolved. Understanding this organization and its relationship to shark behavior and ecology has major implications for our understanding of the evolution of vertebrate nervous systems, and the relationship between form and function in the vertebrate brain. In recent years, great advances in human neuroscience have been made using FMRI, where localized changes in brain activity are detected within a sequence of MR images, thus allowing brain activation as a function of time to be measured. In conjunction with advanced methods for non-invasive, high-resolution MRI for quantitating form in chondrichthyan brains, the goal of this project is to develop FMRI capabilities that facilitate the study of the relationship between form and function in these fishes. However, while FMRI in humans is now routine, performing it in sharks requires the development and refinement of both software and hardware to collect reliable, high quality anatomical and functional MRI data in a living partially submerged aquatic specimen. Hence our key objective is to develop these technological advances, and demonstrate the capability of performing FMRI experiments in the shark nervous system. This project will provide a unique set of methods for studying the relationships between form and function in the shark nervous system, as well as other aquatic model systems, and thus has broad implications for many researchers for whom the link between morphology and function is of great importance, but difficult to explore simultaneously in a well-controlled experimental platform. This project also promotes interdisciplinary collaboration and training in imaging, computation, and data analysis for the morphology, physiology, and marine biology communities. The outcomes of this award including methods, equipment design, and data analysis software will be disseminated to the research community through the Digital Fish Library website (http://www.digitalfishlibrary.org).