This is an application to establish a Bioengineering Research Partnership (BRP) to develop and integrate new technologies for the comprehensive mapping of human brain function. These will be used to study functionally connected networks within the brain and will provide the information for systems analyses of the neural bases of normal and abnormal behaviors. They will be applied to study development in children and infants, as well as the neurobiological basis of various psychiatric, developmental and neurological disorders. The BRP would develop non-invasive instrumentation, techniques and algorithms to acquire and combine the information obtainable from advanced high field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at 4 Tesla, near infra-red optical imaging, electrophysiology (including evoked responses), trans-magnetic stimulation (TMS), and computer data analysis and image processing. It would develop and validate novel means of performing functional imaging studies and of recording cognitive and physiological responses within the environment of a 4T imaging magnet, as well as methods to combine the information from the various complementary techniques involved. The partnership would bring together 6 core laboratories within Yale University, the host institution, and would also closely involve 8 collaborating corporate partners as well as investigators from 8 other universities (Vanderbilt, Columbia and New York Universities, UNC, UConn, Oregon Health Sciences Center, Medical College of South Carolina, and the Bronx VA Hospital). The BRP will include physicists, engineers, computer scientists, neuroscientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, pediatricians and radiologists. During Year 1 advanced functional imaging methods will be implemented at 4T, and the equipment needed for ERP and NW will be modified for use in the magnet. Similar developments of these modalities, of TMS and psychophysical techniques, will continue through years 2 and 3. The first three years of the BRP would focus on the development and validation of novel techniques for inducing and assessing brain activation in response to stimuli, while years 4 and 5 would focus more on developing methods for the integration of data obtainable by different means and for their analysis and interpretation in specific applications. The establishment of a BRP would be an ideal mechanism for bringing together different approaches to the study of brain function, and the integration of the various methods will provide a valuable new resource for neuroscience research whose capabilities will far exceed the sum of the separate components.
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