The UCSD School of Medicine proposes the development of a new research building that will provide desperately needed space for a Brain Imaging Center to be located on the La Jolla campus. Funding has been identified through gifts, campus discretionary and loan funds to support construction of a 4,390 assignable square foot (ASF) facility as an addition to the School's Basic Science Building. The building will provide space for a 3-Tesla MRI scanner, computer support, a director's office, two faculty offices, electronics laboratory, subject/patient support, and a primate holding facility. Shell space for a second scanner will be fully funded by UCSD. The program to be housed in the new space will provide critical core support to the highly rated neurosciences research programs of UCSD and the Salk Instituted. The Salk Institute and UCSD lead several national rankings in neuroscience but capacity to perform functional brain imaging is limited compared with other centers of excellence, Research is restricted to one day per week on one of two clinical MRI scanners where experiments may be aborted by clinical priorities. Over 20 faculty have ongoing fMRI projects and more are poised to explore this new technique, but are limited by the current facilities. With the proposed project, the potential for scientific advances and attracting new research funding is greatly enhanced.
