ReviewThe NIH experience in first advancing fMRI
Highlights
► Motivation for investigation of BOLD contrast. ► Value of EPI data acquisition. ► Detailed chronology of first experiments. ► Response of NIH neuroscientists to successful BOLD fMRI.
Section snippets
Scientific context
My background is a BA degree in physics and mathematics, and a PhD in physics. After three years pursuing research into liquid metals and then liquid crystals as a physics postdoctoral fellow at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University, I left in 1975 to study social anthropology for two years at University College London. There I was taught that Western concepts of social behavior had little place in the interpretation of other cultures, which were considered to originate independently
Chronology
The original notebooks containing the key dates in this chronology between 1986 and 1993 are available in my personal library or on file at NIH.
The chronology is as follows:
1978: Turner read Lassen and Ingvar's Scientific American article on 133Xe imaging of brain function.
1982: Turner was introduced to MRI at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Scotland.
1983: Turner viewed EPI movies of beating infant heart in Peter Mansfield's lab, Nottingham. Turner proposed EPI movies of brain function.
1986, 14th
History of BOLD at NIH
Joining NIH in 1988, I started work immediately with Denis Le Bihan, in the hopes that perfusion imaging using magnetic field gradient labeling of rapidly moving spins (IVIM) could identify regionally specific changes in cerebral blood flow (CBF). I implemented the technique of diffusion-weighted EPI, using a z-axis head gradient coil designed by me and built at NIH, on the 1.5 T GE Signa scanner at NIH. This was done with the help of James McFall, and the GE R&D engineers Joe Maier and Bob
Perspective
BOLD fMRI, using EPI data acquisition, is now the most common technique for mapping human brain activity. BOLD imaging unquestionably arose from observations in rat brain made by Seiji Ogawa, when he was a researcher at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey. He showed that gradient echo imaging, at the very high field strength of 7 Tesla, showed variations of visibility of rat brain veins that depended on the oxygenation level of the blood (Ogawa et al., 1990a, Ogawa et al., 1990b).
The MRI technique
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Cited by (4)
Functional-structural reorganisation of the neuronal network for auditory perception in subjects with unilateral hearing loss: Review of neuroimaging studies
2016, Hearing ResearchCitation Excerpt :One study utilized two different imaging methods (fMRI and T1 volumetric images). fMRI rests on the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) contrast that gives an indirect measure of neuronal activity (Buxton, 2012; Ogawa et al., 1992; Kwong, 2012; Turner, 2012; Friston et al., 1996). The spatial distribution of the hyperoxygenation is therefore not necessarily directly comparable to the location of activated neurons (Scheffler et al., 1998).
Twenty years of functional MRI: The science and the stories
2012, NeuroImageCitation Excerpt :Seiji Ogawa describes in a short piece his own experience of the beginnings of BOLD contrast in the context of human brain activation (Ogawa, 2012). Here, Ken Kwong (2012), Kamil Ugurbil (2012-a), myself (Bandettini, in 2012), Andrew Blamire (2012), and Bob Turner (2012), – five of the first six groups to successfully perform fMRI in the period between early 1991 and 1992 – each describe the story of their first BOLD fMRI experiments. How these accounts overlap and differ is truly a fascinating glimpse into these intense early and, as Mark Cohen of UCLA once said to me at an early meeting, “heady” days of fMRI.
Diagnostic capabilities of transcranial magnetic stimulation to predict motor recovery after a stroke
2020, Nervno-Myshechnye BolezniThe physics of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
2013, Reports on Progress in Physics