This Core facility is charged with providing a comprehensive computational environment to perform neuroanatomic analysis, image registration and functional-anatomic database development in support of the specific hypotheses regarding anatomic specificity of drug-related changes in fMRI signal presented in the Projects. This task is divided into the following three general processing domains: 1) neuroanatomic analysis of human and rodent subjects, 2) integration of structural and functional maps within a subject, and 3) data management to support within individual or between group hypothesis testing for use in each of the Projects. Functional MRI (fMRI) can provide information about both the location of cortical and subcortical areas involved in the response to drug administration, and dynamic information relating to the temporal interrelationships of these areas. Therefore, this Core must provide a reproducible and efficient means for obtaining, analyzing, testing and reporting the resultant structural and functional data. The non-invasive nature of MRI allows multiple experiments to be repeated on an individual subject, both human and rodent, during the course of one examination period as well as on multiple occasions. These data must be registered accurately, in both space and time, and interpreted to isolate physiological phenomena of interest from extraneous sources. Three- dimensional, high-resolution, anatomic MRI images will serve as the basis for interrelating this information. These intersubject comparisons are required to understand the spatial distribution of brain activation within and between groups of subjects and the relationship of this pattern of activation to drug-related alterations. The required computational operations for these tasks are already developed and in daily use. Continued development effort is necessary to optimize these tasks for proposed projects in order to improve processing efficiency and maximize the specificity of the observed functional changes.
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