This three-year grant will purchase two pieces of equipment for magnetic resonance imaging of the brain at the California Institute of Technology. One equipment piece provides the best resolution in a horizontal orientation; the second provides imaging of behaving monkeys in vertical position. This will provide state-of-the-art tools for investigating brain structure and function in monkeys with noninvasive methods, and also provide opportunities for imaging post-mortem human brains. The technology will make possible a set of research studies on how the brain processes information, including how it sees faces, how it weighs different choices, and how it makes decisions and guides action. These are important questions in neuroscience, and the new equipment will greatly enhance science at the Caltech Brain Imaging Center. The grant will also provide opportunities for training of students and post-docs on the new equipment. This will include classes taught at Caltech as well as participation in individual research projects. The development of these new scientific tools will lead to a better understanding of how the brain works, and how it is "wired up." That knowledge, in turn, will contribute to efforts to build artificially intelligent systems. Taken together, the cutting-edge science enabled by the new equipment, and the training of the next generation of young scientists on it, will contribute substantially to cognitive neuroscience in America and worldwide.
