Neuroimaging

The Neuroimaging Technology Research Center (NTRC) is pleased to announce their first pilot grantees who are leading investigations into a range of neuropsychiatric conditions.

A UCSF-led clinical trial is testing whether mind-body movement programs like Tai Chi and Moving Together can slow cognitive decline in older adults with memory issues. Early results show potential brain benefits, especially from Moving Together.

Andreas Rauschecker, MD, PhD, and Pierre Nedelec are first authors of “Neurocognitive and brain structure correlates of reading and television habits in early adolescence,” published in Scientific Reports, with senior author Leo Sugrue, MD, PhD. By analyzing brain scans (MRI) and cognitive tests from over 8,000 adolescents in the US, they investigated how reading and television habits are linked to brain structure and cognitive abilities.

Understanding how neurodegenerative diseases disrupt the neural mechanisms of speaking can potentially lead to early disease detection and the development of novel therapeutic strategies for individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological disorders to maintain clearer and more intelligible speech.

Michael Weiner, MD, has reinvented his scientific focus more than once during his now half-century-long career. In 1980, Weiner was an Assistant Professor of Medicine (Nephrology) at Stanford, researching kidney metabolism at the Palo Alto Veterans Administration (VA) Medical Center.

UCSF researchers Harry (Shenghuan) Sun, Justin Torok, Daren Ma, and Ashish Raj, PhD, with Christopher Mezias of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, published “Spatial cell-type enrichment predicts mouse brain connectivity” in Cell Reports. 

Leighton Hinkley, PhD, first author of "Distinct neurophysiology during nonword repetition in logopenic and non-fluent variants of primary progressive aphasia" in Human Brain Mapping uses advanced imaging techniques to better understand neurodegenerative diseases. The research focused on Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA), a condition within the Alzheimer's disease spectrum. In a recent interview Hinkley, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), explains his team's neuroimaging research.

Three UCSF Radiology researchers have received Surbeck Travel Awards to present their research at the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) annual meeting. The recipients — Matthew Gibbons, PhD, Céline Taglang, PhD, and Pierre Nedelec — will travel to Toronto for the conference taking place June 3-8, 2023.

Each Surbeck Travel Award recipient will give an oral presentation at ISMRM

In a recent interview reflecting on ADNI’s significance in advancing Alzheimer’s research, Dr. Weiner observed that a major challenge for all clinical trials is that the trial participants do not fully represent the populations of people who need treatment.

A UCSF team that includes members of the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, is addressing new clinical and research neuro applications of High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) and Low Intensity Focused Ultrasound (LIFU). A time will present their work on brain applications of HIFU and LIFU in an upcoming webinar on March 28 at noon PDT.