Functional and metabolic MRI techniques have been rapidly evolving and have tremendous potential for clinical brain disorders research. Clinical activation fMRI studies are performed at 1.5 and at 3.0 Tesla using blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) contrast method and arterial spin tagging (AST) techniques. Reproducible alterations Cerebral Blood Flow (CBF) were observed in healthy controls receiving intravenous infusions of a cyclo-oxygenase inhibitor (COX) 1, indomethicin with almost complete suppression of the alteration of CBF to 6% carbon dioxide at rest. In contrast, high dose oral COX 2 inhibitors did not suppress CBF measures in healthy controls that may be due to either an inability to interact with receptors in the brain or possibly do to an insufficient dose or poor absorption of the medication. In addition, we are planning to perform these studies during sensori-motor task activation in order to determine if a COX ?1 inhibitor suppresses the CBF response with stimulation. Future, work will focus on improving the AST pulse sequences with background suppression to provide coverage over the whole head and also move the techniques to higher field strengths.
