FMRI AND PET STUDIES OF OCULOMOTOR NEUROPHYSIOLOGY

University Of Pittsburgh At Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA

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Abstract

This is for the PI to develop his skills in the area of functional neuroimaging. The advent of high-field ultra-fast echo-planar fMRI and 3D PET provides the opportunity to conduct in vivo functional neuroimaging studies with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. The informed application of these technologies has great potential for delineating the nature, progression and treatment- responsiveness of brain dysfunction in psychiatric disorders at the level of individual patients. The PI requests support for a training program designed to develop the skills needed to initiate novel and sophisticated neuroimaging studies as a central element of his established program of schizophrenia research. The scientific aims to be pursued represent a systematic extension of the PI's ongoing studies of eye movement abnormalities in schizophrenia, in which newly-available neuroimaging strategies will be used to directly characterize neurophysiologic abnormalities associated with these established neurobehavioral deficits. The proposed program of neuroimaging studies is rooted in the well- developed understanding of oculomotor neurophysiology provided by extensive single-cell recording studies of behaving monkeys. The training and scientific aims described in this application will be accomplished in the context of: 1) exceptional technical and scientific resources at the MR and PET Centers at the "University of Pittsburgh, 2) ongoing collaborative work with neuroradiologists, statisticians, engineers and physicists focused on neuroimaging methodologies, 3) an integrated program of schizophrenia research including both basic and clinical investigators, and 4) linkages to senior investigators actively studying oculomotor systems in monkeys at the single cell level.