Acquisition of a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) System for Cognitive Neuroscience

University Of Oregon Eugene, Eugene OR

Investigators

Abstract

Neville 0079540 There is virtually universal agreement that the 21 st century will be a time of unprecedented and unimaginable discoveries about the fundamental mechanisms that give rise to human thought and behavior. Catapulting us to this threshold have been key advances in cognitive science that have identified and specified interactions between the essential components of mental processes, and dis-coveries and technical advances within neuroscience that have made it possible to describe mechanisms of neuronal activity at cellular and molecular levels. - The previously ephemeral interface between these disparate levels of analysis has been strengthened by focussed efforts during this decade of the brain that have made comprehensive and noninvasive brain imaging a reality. Knowledge about the biology of cognition brings a perspective that is critical to understanding mental phenomena just as knowledge of the computations essential to cognition reveals constraints on how the brain performs its essential functions. An understanding of how functionally specialized brain systems develop is now within our grasp. The fundamental significance of these research enterprises lies in illuminating our mental capacities and vulnerabilities and in the benefits that such understanding will confer upon human society in the form of guidance in the design and implementation of educational programs to take advantage of the multiple, specific and limited time windows in human development when environmental input is most effective. Scientists at the University of Oregon (UO) have made significant and pioneering contributions to the componential analysis of cognition, to characterizing single neuron and population electrophysio-logical responses in animals and humans and from the conjunction of these strengths have established one of the world's foremost research and training programs at the interface of cognitive science and neuro-science, i.e. in Cognitive Neuroscience. UO scientists have also performed foundational studies using techniques that image blood flow and oxygenation in the brain iii studies of human cognition. However, since facilities for these studies are not available locally, such investigations have been severely limited in number, are conducted by only a few scientists and students and have been extremely expensive in time and funds because they have been conducted at sites distant from the UO. This application seeks support for the purchase of an MRI System so that each of the faculty and students within the many research and training programs that comprise cognitive neuroscience at UO can access this powerful new technique which has so recently defined a new level of analysis in the study of the human mind. This facility will be employed in basic studies investigating the brain systems and mechanisms important in selecting, localizing and attending to particular events in complex, ecologically valid, auditory environments (Takahashi et al.), the processing cascade involved in transforming visual signals into veridical perceptions and conscious experience (Dassonville, Sereno), systems important for motor control, sensory-motor integration and learning (Mayr, Woollacott, van Donkelaar), the pharmacological and anatomical analysis of covert orienting (Marrocco et al.), the interface between and mechanisms of spatial attention and spatial working memory (Awh), the architecture and encoding mechanisms of working memory and the dynamics of retrieval and forgetting (Awh, Anderson), the neurobiology of emotions and motivational influences on cognition (Tucker), the organization, plasticity and development of sensory and language relevant neural systems in adults and children (Neville, Canseco-Gonzalez, Corina) and the changes in neural circuitry underlying high level cognitive skill acquisition in adults and children (Posner, Rothbart). A unique feature of our research with MRI will be integration of its high spatial resolution with the high temporal resolution of state of the art electrophysiological recordings from humans and with the very high spatial and temporal resolution of single unit studies in non-humans, in which we have unique research strengths. Interdisciplinary research training has long been recognized as a keystone of education at the UO where interdisciplinary research institutes and training programs were established over two decades ago. The proposed facility would build on this unique strength of the UO and will bring it to a new level by providing powerful opportunities for the integration of information about cognition and the brain from multiple levels of analysis. Since there are currently no comparable MRI research facilities in the Northwest, user support from the regional science community will be strong.