Researchers Await FAS MRI

The Center for Brain Science is waiting for the arrival of the final parts of the first magnetic resonance imaging machine within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences before making it available for research and undergraduate study.

The MRI will serve projects from across the University, transferring much of Harvard’s brain-imaging research from the MRI facility at Massachusetts General Hospital in Charlestown to the Northwest Science building in Cambridge.

While clinical research will continue to be conducted at the hospital, the new MRI will provide a closer option for non-clinical study.

These long-awaited developments in the Neuroimaging Facility of the Center for Brain Science coincide with more difficult times for other FAS departments.

Although the $3 million costs of the machine were covered by external funding from grants, Harvard has allocated an abundant amount of space for the project. The Center for Brain Science will also be allowed to continue the search to fill two openings despite the FAS-wide freeze on most new hires.

Kenneth I. Blum, Executive Director of Harvard Center for Brain Science, said that Harvard has “given generous support for the MRI facility, which is a very complex machine and requires support.”

The MRI is just the beginning of the department’s plans for neuroimaging research—several rooms adjacent to the scanner have been left vacant to allow for future expansion, including a possible second scanner.

The new, 3 tesla MRI—standard for non-clinical research—will provide a magnetic strength 60,000 times stronger than the earth’s magnetic field, Blum said.

The machine observes blood flows in the brain, allowing researchers to see the active brain regions of the subject.

“It is the best technique we have for learning about the human brain that is non-invasive,” Blum said.

Three years ago, MIT obtained the first of two MRI machines in a similar transition away from MGH Charlestown. According to Steven Shannon, an operations manager and MR research technologist at MIT, their primary machine now operates twelve hours a day, every day, to support MIT-affiliated research.

The Neuroimaging Facility at the Center for Brain Science has been in planning since the beginning of the decade. The space for the MRI was completed last semester—following the entire Center’s move into the Northwest Labs in July—and except for a few small parts, the MRI was ready by the end of January, according to Psychology Professor Randy L. Buckner.

Buckner will be one of the first researchers to use the scanner, observing how one’s memory systems can predict what one will do in the future. His subjects will navigate through a virtual environment, while under observation by the MRI.

In two weeks, when the last of the equipment arrives, the MRI will mark the beginning of a new era in neuroimaging research at Harvard.

“This building is intended to be state of the art for decades to come,” Blum said.

—Staff writer Elyssa A. L. Spitzer can be reached at spitzer@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Noah S. Rayman can be reached at nrayman@fas.harvard.edu.