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SPRING 2007
Big BIRC On Campus
by Rebecca Ayer

UGA's bioimaging research center, with an exceptional array of technology and talent under one roof, seeks to illuminate the workings of human (and animal) mind and matter.

Since 1665, when Robert Hooke published his historic book, Micrographia and introduced the microscope, scientists have appreciated the supreme importance of being able to see what cannot be seen with the naked eye. They have steadily worked to deepen their knowledge through tissue imaging—and to advance the technology itself.

With the opening of the state-of-the-art Bioimaging Research Center (BIRC) in January 2007, the University of Georgia committed itself to furthering this tradition of scientific discovery and technological innovation. Located in the north wing of the Paul D. Coverdell Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences, the BIRC represents the newest addition to the university’s rapidly expanding biomedical research profile.

At the heart of BIRC’s 9,000-square-foot suite is its new $2.3-million magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system. A powerful tool for discovering details on how the brain and body work, this 3-Tesla magnet—twice as strong as the MRI machines typically used for patient care—offers to UGA researchers a number of imaging capabilities previously unavailable on campus. These include structural MRI for highly detailed images of brain, muscle, and bone tissue, functional neuroimaging (fMRI) for real-time studies of the working brain, and magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) for measuring changes in the body’s biochemical processes.

Moreover, BIRC offers magnetoencephalography (MEG) and high-density-array electroencephalography (EEG)—two functional imaging techniques that allow for investigation into the workings of the brain at the very moment that thought occurs.

Brett Clementz, a UGA professor of psychology who also directs the bioimaging center’s EEG/MEG laboratory, points out that this integration of magnetic resonance, EEG, and MEG technologies puts the University on the map as a center for multi-modal neuroimaging.

“Few other centers in the United States, or even the world, can do this kind of work because they lack a research-dedicated facility that offers these technologies next door to each other,” said Clementz. “It will position UGA investigators to do cutting-edge work as well as attract individuals from other institutions interested in collaborative science.”

UGA had already attracted Clementz and his wife Jennifer McDowell, also a psychology faculty member, even when the BIRC was still in the conceptual stages. In 2002, the husband-and-wife team left the University of California, San Diego, to take advantage of UGA’s growing opportunities and expanding resources in neuroimaging. They brought expertise in schizophrenia research to the department, as well as significant experience in all three of the major imaging techniques now offered at the BIRC.

“Different types of imaging techniques have different strengths,” said McDowell. “Functional MRI is very good at providing accurate spatial resolution or determining what areas of the brain are actively engaged in a given task. MEG and EEG have excellent temporal resolution—that is, they reveal how brain activity changes on a millisecond-by-millisecond basis.” Used together, she said, these methods may illuminate the integrated workings of the living brain.

In their own research, Clementz and McDowell use these neuroimaging techniques to map the brain’s neural circuitry in hopes of determining the causes of normal and abnormal aging, and schizophrenia, a debilitating disease that affects nearly 1 in 100 people.

Individuals with schizophrenia suffer from terrifying symptoms—distorted perceptions of reality, hallucinations, delusions, and disordered thinking. To better understand the nature of this information breakdown in the schizophrenic brain, Clementz uses MEG and EEG to compare brain-activity data from healthy and mentally ill individuals.

McDowell incorporates fMRI techniques, along with MEG and EEG, in her investigations of how the brain changes as a person practices a task and gets better at it.

“We have an interest in this because we wonder if we can do things to make the prefrontal cortex—the specific region of the brain known to be impaired in schizophrenia—look more normal in people who have schizophrenia,” said McDowell. “What we find may have a host of implications for functional rehabilitation.”

The BIRC’s tissue-imaging technologies will not be directed to the brain alone. The center’s capabilities will also benefit researchers investigating the dynamics of bone and muscle composition.

Kinesiology professor Kevin McCully has been working with MR magnets since 1985, studying the effects of age and disorders, such as chronic fatigue syndrome and spinal-cord injury, on muscle and vascular function. “People who suffer from neuromuscular or metabolic diseases have impaired energy metabolism,” said McCully. “In order to better understand why, and to develop exercise therapies that improve these conditions, there must be something we can measure.”

McCully uses MRS to measure the concentration of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and phosphocreatine, two high-energy compounds important in the storage and release of energy in muscles. The imaging technique takes advantage of the fact that different chemicals vibrate at different frequencies, like a tuning fork, when stimulated by a specific range of radio frequencies within a strong magnetic field. This same principle, McCully explained, is applied by MRI units to excite hydrogen protons to create an image.

For his first project at BIRC, McCully will use MRS to examine the relationship between the inflammatory response and changes in the intracellular magnesium essential in ATP synthesis. Vigorous aerobic exercise will be used as it typically results in a mild inflammatory response.

“The ability to measure the inflammatory response in a human is an exciting prospect, because its exact cause isn’t clear,” said McCully. “Recent evidence has shown that your ability to respond to training, to make muscles bigger, or to improve your endurance might be linked to the inflammatory-response mechanism.”

The BIRC’s MR technologies also present opportunities for innovation in the bioimaging applications themselves. Qun Zhao, who came to UGA as assistant professor of physics and astronomy and joined the center as its MR physicist in August 2006, is leading this new interdisciplinary area of research at the university.

Zhao had previously worked as a research scientist in industry, improving fMRI system applications and MRI radio-frequency coil design, but the research possibilities offered at the BIRC—particularly the prospect of broad collaborations with researchers in biology—proved irresistible.

UGA’s strengths in cancer research and nanotechnology have already inspired Zhao to venture into those areas in order to expand the use of MRI in the diagnosis of disease. To start, he plans to join forces with scientists at UGA’s Complex Carbohydrate Research Center and Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center to develop biocompatible nanoparticles capable of recognizing cancer.

“As intravenous contrast agents,” said Zhao, “nanoparticles could be used to enhance an MRI system’s ability to find tumor cells, allowing not only the early diagnosis of cancer but improved treatment evaluation and drug delivery as well.”

All in all, UGA is now set up to make a real mark in bioimaging, said BIRC director Stephen Miller. “This facility makes a series of technologies available that together give us functional and structural imaging capabilities like nowhere else. There are other research-dedicated MR magnets in the United States, but there are only a handful that have what we have to offer under one roof.”

For more information about bioimaging research at UGA visit www.uga.edu/psychology/millerlab/index.html or contact Steve Miller at lsmiller@uga.edu.