COMPARATIVE STUDIES OF PRIMATE BRAIN ORGANIZATION USING MRI

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. We have very little direct knowledge about the connectivity and regional organization of the human brain or that of chimpanzees, our closest relatives. This is because most of the techniques developed by neuroscientists for studying brain organization require invasive and/or terminal procedures, which are unsuitable for use in humans or in chimpanzees. Recently developed techniques using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) offer the prospect of examining the connections between brain regions and other aspects of brain organization non-invasively in living organisms or in fixed tissue from organisms that have died of natural causes. We are refining these techniques and are applying them to understand how the human brain resembles and differs from that of other animals.