(Taken from application abstract): This is an application for a collaborative R01 grant in response to the Human Brain Project PA-96-002. This project will bring together expertise in cognitive neuroscience, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), statistics, and computer science to develop advanced tools for the processing and analysis of neuroimaging datasets. The primary goal of the project is to improve the temporal sensitivity of fMRI measurements of the neural activity associated with cognitive processes, and to improve the methods by which data are processed and analyzed. The project has three immediate goals: 1) the conduct of empirical studies, that will characterize the dynamics of the fMRI signal in response to experimentally controlled manipulation of the intensity and duration of specific sensory and cognitive processes; 2) the development of quantitative statistical models of these effects that will permit more sophisticated and detailed interpretations of fMRI data than previously possible, significantly improving its temporal sensitivity; 3) the implementation of these computational intensive statistical methods of high performance computing platforms. Success in this work will provide valuable new information about the relationship between the fMRI signal and the neurobiological (and cognitive) processes it is used to measure, as well as new methods for exploiting this information to improve the temporal sensitivity of this technique. More broadly, it will form the basis for a longer term effort to develop tools that have potential for wide applicability, both to other hemodynamically-based neuroimaging modalities (such as MR-based perfusion techniques, and PET), and to other content areas, such as studies of clinical and developmental populations. This project represents a tightly-integrated interdisciplinary effort to advance the state-of-the-art neuroimaging methodology along both scientific and technological dimensions. Success will allow us to better characterize the dynamics as well as the anatomic location of functional activity in the brain. This will significantly improve the sophistication of the questions that can be asked, and productively answered, about the neural bases of cognitive functions and their impairment in neuropsychiatric disorders.
