MRI benefits students' research
Dartmouth is the proud owner of a new and powerful tool for the study of neurological function " one of the nation's first functional magnetic resonance imaging scanners to be dedicated solely to research. The MRI scanner, housed in Moore Hall and managed by the psychological and brain sciences department, was brought online in January and is now being used for a gradually increasing number of research projects. Uses Professor of psychological and brain sciences and director of the Dartmouth Brain Imaging Center Scott Grafton said the fMRI is the most promising new technology to emerge in the past decade for the study of brain function. In the past, MR images, generated using magnetic fields 10,000 times stronger than the earth's, were used simply to obtain anatomical information about the brain. Now, after the discovery that changes in blood flow accompanying increases or decreases in neural activity could be detected using MRI scanners, these functional MR images, or fMRIs, are powerful tools for researchers interested in learning about how the brain works. By using functional MR scanning to compare resting neurological activity to activity occurring while the research subject performs some action or experiences a stimulus, a variety of types of neurological activity can be studied using the technique. People employing the fMRI at Dartmouth are researching topics ranging from the function of the brain's frontal lobe in the executive control of social behavior to the effects of culture background on the brain's interpretation of cultural stimuli. The latter project is being done by psychology professor and Associate Dean of the Faculty Jamshed Bharucha in conjunction with graduate student Petr Janata. Research subjects of Indian and western descent and upbringing listen to both western and Indian classical and pop music, as well as newscasts in both English and Hindi, while functional MR images are taken at a rate of one image of the entire brain -- 30 slices every two seconds. The fMRI shows differences between brain activity while subjects are listening to familiar and unfamiliar auditory stimuli. It is far too soon to have any definite results, Janata said, but a very preliminary look at the data suggests that subjects are more focused " that is, there is less neural activity " when listening to familiar stimuli. Unique Opportunities Members of the Dartmouth community are afforded some special opportunities by the $1.2 million research tool in Moore. Dartmouth is in fact the first college or university in the nation to have an MRI facility specifically for research purposes.