Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

In diffusion MRI, simultaneous multi-slice single-shot EPI acquisitions have the potential to increase the number of diffusion directions obtained per unit time, allowing more diffusion encoding in high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) acquisitions. Nonetheless, unaliasing simultaneously acquired, closely spaced slices with parallel imaging methods can be difficult, leading to high g-factor penalties (i.e., lower SNR).

How human beings integrate information from external sources and internal cognition to produce a coherent experience is still not well understood. During the past decades, anatomical, neurophysiological and neuroimaging research in multimodal integration have stood out in the effort to understand the perceptual binding properties of the brain. Areas in the human lateral occipitotemporal, prefrontal, and posterior parietal cortices have been associated with sensory multimodal processing.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: This review focuses on recent advances in functional connectivity MRI and renewed interest in studying the large-scale functional network assemblies in the brain. We also consider some methodological aspects of graph theoretical analysis.

Cortical folding (gyrification) is determined during the first months of life, so that adverse events occurring during this period leave traces that will be identifiable at any age. As recently reviewed by Mangin and colleagues(2), several methods exist to quantify different characteristics of gyrification. For instance, sulcal morphometry can be used to measure shape descriptors such as the depth, length or indices of inter-hemispheric asymmetry(3). These geometrical properties have the advantage of being easy to interpret.

The report of any new and successful method for studying the world triggers the need to train people in the use of that method. In the case of functional magnetic resonance imaging and its use for examining human brain function in vivo, expertise is required in a greater collection of domains than usual. Development of fMRI training programs started shortly after the announcement of BOLD-based fMRI in humans. These programs had a variety of durations and primary content areas.

The prevalence of fMRI in cognitive neuroscience research is clear, but the overall impact of the associated research in the broader scope of our scientific community, and of society, is less obvious. The first reports of fMRI garnered huge interest in many areas, giving rise to a wide range of applications and technical developments over the past 20 years. Using five primary areas, i.e. scientific impact, clinical practice, cognitive neuroscience, mental illness, and society-this essay examines the question: Has fMRI changed the world?

BACKGROUND: Aberrant accumulation of transition metals in the brain may have an early and important role in the pathogenesis of several neurodegenerative disorders, including Huntington disease (HD).
OBJECTIVE: To comprehensively evaluate and validate the distribution of metal deposition in the brain using advanced magnetic resonance imaging methods from the premanifest through symptomatic stages of HD.
DESIGN: Observational study.
SETTING: University imaging center.

It is tentatively estimated that 25% of people with early Alzheimer's disease (AD) show impaired awareness of disease-related changes in their own cognition. Research examining both normative self-awareness and altered awareness resulting from brain disease or injury points to the central role of the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) in generating accurate self-appraisals. The current project builds on this work - examining changes in MPFC functional connectivity that correspond to impaired self-appraisal accuracy early in the AD time course.

Longitudinal image analysis has become increasingly important in clinical studies of normal aging and neurodegenerative disorders. Furthermore, there is a growing appreciation of the potential utility of longitudinally acquired structural images and reliable image processing to evaluate disease modifying therapies. Challenges have been related to the variability that is inherent in the available cross-sectional processing tools, to the introduction of bias in longitudinal processing and to potential over-regularization.

Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is a major challenge to sodium magnetic resonance imaging. Phased array coils have been shown significantly improving SNR in proton imaging over volume coils. This study investigates SNR advantage of a 15-channel array head coil (birdcage volume coil for transmit/receive and 15-channel array insert for receive-only) in sodium imaging at 7 T. Phantoms and healthy human brains were scanned on a whole-body 7 T magnetic resonance imaging scanner using a customer-developed pulse sequence with the twisted projection imaging trajectory.