Grant: CIHR New Investigator

Functional magnetic resonance imaging has greatly enhanced our understanding of how the healthy human brain processes information. To date, however, this technology's promise of revolutionizing clinical practice has not been realized, to a large extent due to the lack of a detailed knowledge of the biophysical mechanism that links brain activity to signal changes detected by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Although it is well established that brain activity is associated with local changes in brain's blood flow that MRI can detect, an understanding of these blood flow changes and their relationship with brain activity has not been fully developed. Moreover, the alterations in this relationship that occur with disease are largely unknown. To address these issues, we will perform detailed microscopic and functional MRI investigations in animals, allowing the development of a biophysical model of functional MRI to aid in the interpretation of functional MRI data in patients and providing a platform for future studies of the growing list of diseases that are thought to alter the relationship between blood circulation and activity in the brain, such as stroke and Alzheimer's disease.