The candidate seeks an ISA in order to develop expertise in a new research method, functional MRI. Without an ISA, ongoing clinical-administrative responsibilities would prohibit this career development.
The aims of the candidate's research over the past 20 years have been twofold. First, he has sought to identify and assess aspects of human brain functions that involve the integrated action of many cells in functional systems often distributed through several brain regions. To this end he has developed and applied dichotic listening and visual half-field single hemisphere stimulation techniques, and studied dual task interactions and effects of emotion or changes in physiological state. Second, he has applied these techniques to the study of major psychosis especially schizophrenia. There the goals have been to elucidate pathophysiological processes and contribute to the development of a physiologically based nosology. fMRI is a new technique particularly well-suited for these goals. It yields individual subject data with superior anatomic and temporal resolution, and can evaluate the same individual with multiple variations of task and/or in multiple clinical or experimental states. Two physicists who have played leading roles in the worldwide effort to develop fMRI are on the faculty at Yale. The candidate has developed productive collaborations with both, and with outstanding scientists on their faculty in neuroanatomy, neuroradiology and statistics. An ISA would enable him to gain knowledge necessary to critically apply and help develop further this new methodology in collaboration with this interdisciplinary team. The candidate proposes to gain the requisite knowledge through formal course work and weekly tutorial in fMRI technology, weekly tutorial and an interactive computer based course in neuroanatomy, and didactic interactions during the course of collaborative investigation. The proposed research uses fMRI to identify frontal and temporal lobe components of the human auditory working memory system, evaluate the function of these regions and this system in patients with schizophrenia, and eventually, to compare the effects of emotion on this system in patients and healthy controls.
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