When researchers in the field talk about advances in medical imaging over the last 20 years, they don't shy from the word "revolution."
At Penn State and elsewhere, that revolution is ongoing. The College of Medicine's Center for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Research is a partner in a $6.9 million NIH grant whose object is to improve the quality of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to the point where someday clinicians may be able to bring single cells into focus.
Addressing the underlying physics of imaging is just one aspect of the Center's activity. With five clinical magnets, the Center typically runs 15 to 20 projects at a time, recently including a study aimed at improving early identification and treatment of oxygen starvation—a significant cause of brain damage in newborns—and clinical projects involving patients with Lou Gehrig's disease and irritable bowel syndrome.
Qing YangCredit James Collins
An increasing number of these projects are taking advantage of functional MRI (fMRI), which can show not only brain structure but patterns of activity.
"fMRI has introduced a whole new approach to understanding human brain development and maturation and hence pathology," says Paul Eslinger, professor of neurology at Hershey and a frequent collaborator with Center faculty. "Part of that is being able to study normal, healthy people of all ages, which we didn't have any way to do before." No other non-invasive technique, he explains, can show the brain in action.
Working with associate professor of radiology Qing Yang, Eslinger has used fMRI to look at how memory changes with age, and specifically to distinguish normal memory loss from that which may signal the onset of degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. The researchers deploy a special olfactometer to introduce odors like lavender and pepperment to elderly subjects inside the magnet. The scanner then reads the brain's reaction without the subject even identifying the scent. "We think that olfactory processing may be an early biological marker of change in parts of the temporal lobe right alongside the short-term memory areas," Eslinger explains.
At the other end of the life-span, he has teamed with Penn State human development and education professors Clancy Blair and David Baker to map the development of "math intelligence" in children.
"We're imaging children from eight to 18 doing problems involving working memory and relational reasoning, and trying to figure out what areas of the brain are involved during development of that ability," Eslinger reports."The underlying question is 'How should we be teaching math to be sure that those areas are becoming activated?'"
Functional imaging opens up so many possibilities for study, Eslinger admits, that it's sometimes hard to know which to investigate first. "This technology has led to an explosion of knowledge and collaboration, and I think we're still learning to manage that," he says. RPS
Paul N. Eslinger, Ph.D., is professor of neurology in the Penn State College of Medicine; peslinger@psu.edu. Qing X. Yang, Ph.D., is associate professor of radiology and neurosurgery at the Center for NMR Research in the department of radiology in the College of Medicine; qyang@psu.edu. The Center provides MRI and fMRI support to investigators at the College of Medicine and at University Park. Visit the Center online..
