May be only the 7th such MRI in the world

Prof. John Gore, Applied Physics and Diagnostic Radiology and director of the Biomedical Engineering program at Yale, has received a $500,000 National Institutes of Health Shared Instrumentation Grant toward the purchase of a magnetic resonance imaging system with a 4 Tesla magnet with a 94 cm bore diameter. This Functional MRI machine will be large enough to perform human imaging and to detect extremely small changes in brain blood flow. There are about six 4T systems in the world at this time.

Dr. Gore's group will study the changes occurring in the brain's neural circuits when a person reads, speaks, sees or hears something, or when they remember, feel, or focus on something. FMRI will advance research into what happens in a developing brain or in the brain of a person with attention disorder or dyslexia or someone suffering from psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia or autism. The group will also be able to assess with more accuracy the effects on brain activity of hormones, such as estrogen, and of various drugs