Message From The Director
Bruce Rosen on the state of the MGH Martinos Center
I am delighted to report here on the activities of the MGH / HST Athinoula A . Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging . Center investigators and research staff were , as always , highly productive this past year . They continued to advance the state of the art in biomedical imaging , while also applying these innovative technologies to enhance our understandings of how the brain and the body work — knowledge that will no doubt lead to important improvements in healthcare over the coming years , but starting today .
This year is a bit of a milestone for the Center . Nov . 1 , 2016 , marked the 25th anniversary of the publication of the seminal Science paper introducing functional MRI ( fMRI ) to the world . Here , the Center ’ s Jack Belliveau and colleagues reported the first demonstration of the technique , showing the imaging of brain activity in response to a visual stimulus — the iconic cover of Science magazine with this first fMRI image declared to the world that MRI was to be THE tool to study the human brain . The following June , in a seminal and groundbreaking paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , the Center ’ s Ken Kwong showed how to measure brain activity with fMRI based on naturally occurring contrast in the brain — instead of the injected contrast used in Jack ’ s study . Together , the two studies inspired a revolution in neuroimaging , leading to unprecedented insights into the workings of the brain .
We have been celebrating this milestone over the past several months , with a series of events leading up to the fMRI25 symposium and reception on December 6 . ( You can read about these , and also find a handful of essays about the history of the technique , on the website www . fmri25 . org .) But as much as we ’ ve enjoyed looking back on the tremendous advances over the past quarter century , we ’ re even more excited about what ’ s ahead . In the following pages , you ’ ll find reports of some of the cutting-edge fMRI work under way in the Center right now — including , among other studies , explorations of the brain mechanisms implicated in opioid addiction and susceptibility to peer pressure in marijuana users , topics of great current societal interest .
Of course , functional MRI isn ’ t the only imaging technique that Center researchers are developing and applying . Other modalities include diffusion , perfusion and high-speed MRI methods ; positron emission tomography ( PET ) and simultaneous PET-MR ; optical imaging techniques ; and MEG-EEG .
The report you ’ re now reading is divided into three sections : “ Advances in Imaging Technology ,” “ Focus on Clinical Applications ” and “ New Insights Into the Brain .” Each of these highlights work undertaken in the Martinos Center in the past year . You ’ ll note that there ’ s some overlap between the sections — technology advances will have clear clinical benefits , and advances in understanding the brain teach us how to study other critical organs like the heart . This is as it should be . Research in the Center — indeed , across the biomedical imaging endeavor — is never about just one of these ; it always takes into account the whole picture . In the following pages you can learn more about how our scientists do their remarkable work .
Bruce Rosen , Director Athinoula A . Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging