Functional MRI Visiting Fellowship: A Five Day Intensive Introduction

Robert L. Savoy, Ph.D., Director of fMRI Education
Bruce R. Rosen, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the MGH/MIT/HMS Martinos Center

The October program for 2008 is now essentially full, and applications have been arriving rapidly. Notwithstanding any automatic messages sent out, we cannot guarantee participation in the October program for further applicants, and strongly recommend that you register for the December program instead.

Dates for the 2009 programs will be determined in the future, and registration fees for the 2009 programs will be increased significantly, as the fees have remained unchanged for more than 7 years.

2008 Programs:
March 10-14, 2008 (completed)
October 6-10, 2008 (almost full)
December 8-12, 2008 (accepting registrations)

2009 Programs: (NOTE: dates tentative; registration fees to be increased)
March 2-6, 2009
October 5-9, 2009

REGISTRATION FORM
SAMPLE SCHEDULE
ACCOMMODATIONS

REGISTRATION FEES

Regular Registration fee $1200; Graduate Student fee $700. MD's and PhD's are not eligible for the reduced fee.
Enrollment is limited; early registration is recommended.

SHORT COURSE IN FUNCTIONAL MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING

The pioneering work of the Martinos Center has elicited an explosion of research in functional brain imaging. While it has been known for almost 100 years that neural activity causes localized changes in blood flow, and has been more recently demonstrated that neural activity causes localized changes in blood oxygenation, the tools for measuring these signals have historically been highly invasive in animals, and moderately invasive in humans. The seminal work of an extraordinary team of physicists, radiologists, and neuroscientists at the Martinos Center, demonstrating that these changes and blood flow and blood oxygenation can be detected by the non-invasive technology of MRI, has led to a dramatic increase in functional brain imaging work with humans. Because this non-invasive technique permits many repetitions of experimental procedures on a single subject, it is rapidly becoming the method of choice for neuroscience research in functional brain mapping.

The purpose of the present course is to provide a serious introduction to this field. It is primarily intended for people new to the field, though some experienced scientists have found the program useful. More advanced workshops may be developed in the future.

CURRICULUM

Students will receive a firm grounding in the fundamentals of fMRI. This will include the basic physics of MR imaging, the biology and biophysics of the hemodynamic responses to neural activity, data analysis (including both exploratory and statistical analyses), stimulus presentation and response recording in the context of high magnetic fields and electromagnetic pulses, and the design of perceptual and cognitive experiments.

A special emphasis of the course will be the design, implementation, and execution of perceptual and/or cognitive experiments by the participants. Participants will break into small groups to design their own fMRI experiments. Barring unforeseen problems, some of these experiments will be executed, and the resulting data analyzed, on the final day of the course.

The core faculty is drawn from the staffs of Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University, Georgetown University and the National Institute of Mental Health.

SCHEDULE

Course Lectures and Discussions will run from 8AM until approximately 5 PM during all but the last day of the program, with additional activities scheduled for some of the evenings. The last day will be shorter, ending around 3pm. The program will include a demonstration experiment in the scanner. On two evenings we will enjoy a catered dinner in the Atrium Restaurant at the Martinos Center. After these dinners we will re-convene to design and implement the fMRI experiments. Some evening sessions will officially end at approximately 10PM, though experience indicates that participants sometimes stay later. In the event that the scanner is broken or unavailable for course experiments, the proposed experiments will be presented to a group of experts for evaluation. (The program has been conducted 18 times, with only two occasions when the scanner was suddenly unavailable for conducting experiments.)

Course fees are refundable up to 30 days before the course.