Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

This proposal requests funds for the purchase of specialized neuroimaging equipment (MRI head coil and veterinary anesthetic monitoring equipment) for our studies in nonhuman primates (NHPs) at Queen's University. This equipment will support the research programs of multiple faculty members at Queen's, from early career investigators to well-established, tenured faculty, including: Stephen Scott (Biomedical and Molecular Sciences, BMS), Anita Tusche (Psychology), Martin Paré (BMS), Valerie Kuhlmeier (Psychology), Jason Gallivan (Psychology and BMS), Effie Pereira (Psychology), Gunnar Blohm (BMS / Psychology / Math & Stats / School of Computing), and Michele Morningstar (Psychology). The requested equipment will replace older research equipment at our MRI Facility that has been causing significant issues during our NHP neuroimaging testing sessions. For example, although we currently have an NHP head coil for neuroimaging, it requires that animals be scanned in a sphinx position, which causes serious reliability and data quality issues when using modern imaging sequences (which now form the basis of all NHP research at Queen's). We are thus requesting the funds to purchase a newer, supine NHP head coil that circumvents these issues entirely. Similarly, although we currently have anesthetics monitoring equipment, it was purchased over 15 years ago and is now legacy and faulty. This equipment is essential for the sedation of the NHPs and the monitoring of their vital signs during neuroimaging. It is thus essential, for both the safety of the animals and our collective research programs, that this equipment be replaced. In addition, this new NHP equipment will be used to support newly formed, and highly collaborative research programs among Queen's faculty members, as well as all other NHP users at our Facility (Andrew Winterborn, Douglas Munoz, Fernanda De Felice, and DJ Cook). Therefore, failure to replace these devices in a timely fashion will jeopardize a number of ongoing, and successful, research programs, prevent the continuation of new, highly collaborative research programs, and adversely affect HQP training in the collaborating laboratories involved in NHP research at Queen's.