University psychology and biology researchers are using a sophisticated imaging machine to better examine how the brain functions in the hope of yielding answers to some confounding cognitive questions.
Lead researchers are testing the functional magnetic resonance imaging machine, or fMRI, and said they hope to have it ready for approved research projects in the next four weeks.
The $2.5 million brain scanner is the centerpiece in an interdisciplinary research endeavor aimed at forming a better understanding of how humans think, learn and create. It’s also only the second such machine in the nation housed at a non-medical school. The other is in the psychology department at Princeton University.
Private donors and government agencies such as the Department of Defense and National Institutes of Health are funding the roughly $20 million project, called the Brain, Biology and Machine Initiative.
“It’s something that has a lot of really interesting applications,” Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies Rich Linton said. “From the most basic point of view, how the brain functions is universally important.”
Results of fMRI studies could enhance teaching and learning methods. The answers could provide clues to better understand how humans perceive their surroundings. The work may establish more concrete biological evidence of the effects on the brain of illegal and prescription drugs.
MRI facility Director and research associate Ray Nunnally said each study is a brush stroke in a mural of the brain’s unrealized and unmapped potential. Nunnally said he has worked with MRI
technology since 1978.
“We know a lot about what parts of the brain function,” he said. “But we haven’t gotten to the point of, say, an athlete who enhances his body’s performance with proper care and training.”
Paul Dassonville is more concerned with how perception determines reality. The assistant psychology professor has been at the University for three years and has worked with fMRI machines for six years.
“My main research line relates to using the fMRI in studying the pattern of brain activity that corresponds with different types or levels of perceptual awareness,”
he said.
Dassonville said he plans to conduct a study in which he will show a variety of digitally projected images to subjects and evaluate their brain activity. For example, a person lying with their head in the fMRI might see a picture of a face followed by a scrambled image. The subject must identify which is a face and which is scrambled as the images quickly change.
This activity will help Dassonville pinpoint which regions of the brain the subjects use to determine what they think they saw versus what’s actually shown. Dassonville said he hopes the findings will help psychologists and students better understand what happens when the brain perceives the world.
“The research and knowledge we’re gaining will be passed on to students as we teach,” Dassonville said. This term he is teaching an upper-division psychology course in perception.
The fMRI is similar to a magnetic resonance imaging machine, or MRI, but is much more powerful. It is a shallow tube of sensors that can pinpoint minute locations in the brain and measure differences in brain activity based on blood flow to those locations. In short, the machine produces a magnetic field that alters the natural arrangement of positively charged subatomic particles in the blood.
“If you have two magnets on a table, and one is near the other one, one spins and the poles align,” technician for MR Imaging Associates Scott Watrous said. “Hydrogens, for example, line up with a big magnetic field created by the MRI scanner.”
Using high-tech computer software, researchers can detect radio signals emitted from the protons and translate them into an image depicting a slice of tissue. They can also measure how much time it takes the disturbed particles to settle again, and, based on the duration, can differentiate between brain functions.
Linton said there’s a buzz about the new fMRI in scientific circles on campus. He expects more reaction as months stretch into years, as hypothesis become theories and as research yields compelling answers.