The functional MRI group of CBDB consists of multidisciplinary specialists with expertise in neurology, psychiatry, physics, biology and MRI techniques. This group pursues a variety of research agendas involving study of brain function and metabolism in normals and patients with neuropsychiatric disorders particularly schizophrenia, senile dementia of the Alzheimer's type, movement disorders and cerebrovascular disorders. The lion's share of the effort of the functional MRI group has been in the clinical testing and optimization of novel imaging protocols and designing task paradigms for imaging cortical function and metabolism in normal volunteers and patients with neuropsychiatric disorders. Our orientation has been to develop methods that fit our specific aims, i.e. provide information about whole brain 3-dimensional functional neuroanatomy and cortical metabolism in normal healthy controls and in patients with neuropsychiatric disease. To achieve this goal the functional MRI group has completed an extensive phase of methodology, technique, and paradigm development. Currently, fMRI studies are pressing forth at a vigorous pace in the realm of whole brain studies of cognitive activation during neuropsychiatric tasks with emphasis on working memory which have been demonstrated to distinguish control populations from patients with serious mental illnesses. Using these methods (functional and metabolic MRI), it is hoped that a pattern of cortical dysfunction can be characterized that might be testable in other clinical samples, in particular in subjects at risk for neuropsychiatric diseases. Because of the non invasiveness and lack of radiation exposure, these procedures are ideal for studying family members who are at risk for neuropsychiatric illnesses such as schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease, etc. It is conceivable that a genetic risk marker, possibly of use in linkage studies, could be identified.
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