Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Given its ability to precisely and non-invasively localize areas of brain activity, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has become a powerful tool for investigating the role of specific brain structures. Similar studies have also examined the function of the spinal cord and brainstem, thereby broadening our understanding of the central nervous system and how its components function together. Functional magnetic resonance imaging of the spinal cord (spinal fMRI), however, presents many unique technical and practical obstacles, and before spinal fMRI can be used as a reliable clinical tool for assessing spinal cord injury, investigating neurodegenerative diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis, or planning neurosurgical interventions, the imaging and analysis methods must be improved. The overriding focus of our research is therefore to develop and validate faster and more sensitive spinal fMRI methods and ultimately use these to carry out novel studies of spinal cord function. Having recently developed new analysis methods to remove sources of physiological noise from spinal fMRI data, we are now studying the temporal characteristics of MR signal change following brief periods of stimulation, thereby improving the sensitivity of faster spinal cord imaging methods. Such improvements will allow faster spinal fMRI methods than ever before, and will allow spinal fMRI to observe changes in spinal cord activity during very brief voluntary motor tasks such as dexterous wrist, hand, and finger movements. Moreover, these improvements will extend the role of spinal fMRI from its current use as a research tool to an objective clinical diagnostic and prognostic metric.