In functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments, use is made of the hemodynamic response function (HRF), the stereotypical vascular response evoked by brief (<4 s) neural activation. Use of the HRF to evaluate neurovascular function as a cli...

Studies using real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (rt-fMRI) have recently incorporated the decoding approach, allowing for fMRI to be used as a tool to manipulate fine-grained neural activity. Because of the tremendous potential for clinical...

Pharmacological MRI (phMRI) is a translatable, versatile and powerful MRI technique that allows in-vivo non-invasive mapping of the effects of the pharmacological compounds in the brain. High temporal and spatial resolution, whole brain coverage and con...

While conventional MRI has evolved towards increasingly high magnetic fields of several teslas, another approach has emerged, where the signal is detected in an ultra-low field (ULF) on the order of Earth's field. Despite many similarities, ULF-MRI diff...

Previous magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based volumetric studies have shown age-related increases in the volume of total white matter and decreases in total gray matter volume in normal children. However, detailed maps of dynamic growth patterns in the human brain are not yet available. We studied serial structural MRI scans (1.92 to 4.52 year scan interval) from twelve healthy children between the ages of 6 and 19. The follow-up scan of each subject was first rigidly aligned to the baseline scan. Both scans were then aligned to the standard space as defined by the International Consortium for Brain Mapping (ICBM) using a nine parameter affine linear transformation. A non-linear elastic intensity-based registration algorithm was used to deform the source image to the target by maximizing the mutual information between the deforming source and target. Based on the Jacobian map of the deformation field, an annualized tissue change map was then computed for each individual. An example tissue change map for ...

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of death and disability in children and young adolescents in the United States. Animal models of reproducible TBI are necessary to characterize the mechanisms involved in damage and repair at the tissue, cellular and molecular levels. We established a mouse model of TBI, using a computer-driven, controlled cortical impact (CCI) device, and a stereotactic head holder. The CCI device is based on a microprocessor-controlled linear motor, where strike velocity, contusion depth and contusion time are precisely controlled and monitored through a real-time interface. Using high field strength (9.4T) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), we obtained longitudinal data by scanning mice at 24 hours, 72 hours, 7 and 14 days after injury. We used behavioral assessments and traditional histological techniques to validate the model. MRI has also been used to validate injury severity and location, enabling efficient optimization of the model and CCI device parameters. Our resu...

In human lateral temporal cortex, some regions show specific sensitivity to human motion. Here we examine whether such effects reflect a general biological–nonbiological organizational principle or a process specific to human–agent processing by comparing processing of human, animal, and tool motion in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment with healthy participants and a voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) study of patients with brain damage (77 stroke patients). The fMRI experiment revealed that in the lateral temporal cortex, the posterior superior temporal sulcus shows a preference for human and animal motion, whereas the middle part of the right superior temporal sulcus/gyrus (mSTS/STG) shows a preference for human and functional tool motion. VLSM analyses also revealed that damage to this right mSTS/STG region led to more severe impairment in the recognition of human and functional tool motion relative to animal motion, indicating the causal role of this brain area in human–a...

Spontaneous fluctuations in the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signal have been extensively investigated in the human brain. Recently, this has been extended to the human spinal cord (Barry et al., 2014; Kong et al., 2014), where the organ...

We identified and mapped an anatomically localized failure of cortical maturation in Williams syndrome (WS), a genetic condition associated with deletion of ∼20 contiguous genes on chromosome 7. Detailed three-dimensional (3D) maps of cortical thickness, based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of 164 brain hemispheres, identified a delimited zone of right hemisphere perisylvian cortex that was thicker in WS than in matched controls, despite pervasive gray and white matter deficits and reduced total cerebral volumes. 3D cortical surface models were extracted from 82 T1-weighted brain MRI scans (256 × 192 × 124 volumes) of 42 subjects with genetically confirmed WS (mean ± SD, 29.2 ± 9.0 years of age; 19 males, 23 females) and 40 age-matched healthy controls (27.5 ± 7.4 years of age; 16 males, 24 females). A cortical pattern-matching technique used 72 sulcal landmarks traced on each brain as anchors to align cortical thickness maps across subjects, build group average maps, and identify regions with a...

Real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (rt-fMRI) neurofeedback is a powerful method of altering brain activation and a promising clinical tool. Induced changes are known to persist for some time after the intervention. (Amano, et al., 2016; Meg...