This application seeks funding for a Siemens 3T TIM Trio whole-body MRI system to be sited at the Center for Neuroscience at the University of California at Davis. Located in Davis California UC Davis is one of the premier neuroscience communities on the West Coast of the United States and home to two interdisciplinary neuroscience Centers, the Center for Neuroscience and the nearby Center for Mind and Brain, as well as the Western Regional Primate Center. The Center for Neuroscience is home to the Keck Imaging Center where an outstanding array of cellular and molecular imaging methodologies are supported. UC Davis also has an outstanding biomedical engineering program with strong molecular imaging capabilities and a high field small animal MRI facility. However there is no human or large animal research MRI scanner in Davis, making UC Davis the only comprehensive campus of the UC system lacking imaging capabilities. UC Davis Campus based investigators must travel 15 miles to Sacramento to conduct neuroimaging studies on the 3T Siemens Trio in operation at the UC Davis Imaging Research Center which is located on the School of Medicine Campus in that city. This presents substantial logistical challenges including the transportation of human subjects and macaque monkeys, together with research and veterinary staff back and forth from Davis to Sacramento. It also renders some kinds of research (e.g., functional MRI studies of awake, behaving monkeys) unfeasible. The installation of a state of the art research scanner on the Davis Campus would address the above logistical challenges, relieve substantial scheduling challenges due to a high volume of clinical and translational research being conducted at the IRC in Sacramento, and facilitate a wide range of new scientific opportunities presently not feasible, such as functional MRI studies in macaques. This new facility will leverage significant campus resources, including a new full-time professorial faculty position for a high-field MRI Physicist in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Center for Mind and Brain, as well as the highly developed administrative and technical resources of the existing Imaging Research Center, to ensure that UC Davis remains at the forefront in the application of MRI based neuroimaging in basic and translational neuroscience. By co-locating the MRI facility with the Keck Center, we will bring together imaging studies that cut across multiple levels of analysis and enhance collaborative and interdisciplinary research that will accelerate the search for cures for a range of mental, developmental and neurological disorders.
Neuroscience investigators on the main Campus at the University of California, Davis, are internationally recognized leaders in research designed to understanding the cognitive and developmental processes that are altered in serious mental and neurological disorders. At present these investigators must transport their human and animal subjects together with their research and support staff from Davis to Sacramento and this presents a substantial impediment to ongoing research, as well as to the development of new projects. This grant application will support the purchase of a state of the art human and large animal 3T Siemens TIM Trio MRI scanner for installation at the Center for Neuroscience in Davis, greatly enhancing the ability of our outstanding group of investigators to advance their research in fundamental and translational neuroscience.
