Neuroimaging, Behavioral Neurology and Development of 3T MRI projects

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Neuroimaging and Behavioral Neurology studies. Functional and structural neuroimaging are powerful instruments that have revolutionized our ability to study of the brain's higher cognitive and affective functions in health and disease. They are also valuable in revealing the basis of individual differences (traits) in cognitive and affective processing, vulnerability and resilience to disease. This past year, I performed voxel based morphometry analyses on structural MRI scans to explore the neuroanatomical variability associated with long-standing personality traits, which may explain why certain individuals are vulnerable to psychiatric disease, dementia or show inefficient psychological response mechanisms to systemic diseases. Specifically, I found neuroanatomical differences related to traits of religiosity (published in PloS One)and to the Five Factors of personality (currently under peer review). Finally, I performed a voxel based morphometry analysis in Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA) participants and detected a significant decrease in the frontal corpus callosum size associated with alcohol consumption, controlling for dietary, demographic and cardiovascular risk factors (currently under peer review). This finding may help explain why this same region may develop degeneration and necrosis in alcoholism (Marchiafava-Bignami disease). Development of 3T MRI projects. Unlike clinical MRI imaging, scientific applications often utilize techniques that either requires de-novo development or modification of existing research or commercially available protocols before implementation in clinical studies. The purpose of the NIA protocol under the above title has been the development and refinement of MRI scanning procedures and methods at the NIA 3T MRI facility, before implementation in larger scale clinical research studies. Over this last year, this protocol was used to develop the following applications: a tissue segmentation algorithm for fat quantification in the abdomen and thigh, which will be used in the BLSA to assess the association of subcutaneous and visceral fat with markers of inflammation; a tissue segmentation algorithms for fat quantification in the thymus gland, which will be used in the study of growth hormone supplementation; phosphorus spectroscopy to assess the energy consumption of exercising muscle, which will be used in the BLSA; fMRI to assess the process for making personality judgments about self and others; and development of resting state fMRI and brain spectroscopy.