Grant: Fellowship - Priority Announcement: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Although rare, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig is a fatal progressive disease caused by the degeneration of motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord. While its origins are yet unknown, ALS is suspected to be primarily triggered by environmental factors rather than family history. Consistent with the unusually high ALS incidence and mortality among military personnel and professional contact-sport athletes, the strongest risks have been suspected to be Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and intense physical activity. Recent studies have found a 2-fold increase in reported cases of ALS in Gulf War veterans, and an 8-fold increase in Italian soccer players and American footballers. At the moment, ALS is most often only diagnosed after appearance of symptoms, at which point it might already be too late to stop or slow down the degeneration of motor neurons. Moreover, TBI is a poorly understood cerebral disorder, initially believed to only be a temporary loss of consciousness but recently found to involve longer term functional defects and associated cognitive impairments. Novel and safe techniques to image the brain are desperately needed to investigate and understand ALS and TBI, including their potential association. I will hence employ the latest advances in quantitative functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to detect the precise physiological mechanisms underlying brain dysfunctions associated with specific cognitive defects in ALS and TBI patients. Quantitative fMRI represents an extremely powerful non-invasive tool, invaluable for basic neuroscience and for the clinical assessment, prevention, therapy and management of ALS and other brain pathologies. The impact of this research promises to be tremendous on patient quality of life, military training and deployment, as well as in the economic cost to our society.