Studies of Blood Flow to the Brain During Thought

Objective:

Our goal is to study the functional organization of the intact human brain by combining cognitive tasks and neuroimaging. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG) will be used to measure brain activity in healthy human subjects engaged in performing cognitive tasks. These tasks will address specific questions concerning the neural systems that mediate perception, attention, memory, decision-making, emotion, plasticity and social interactions. fMRI and MEG, respectively, will be employed to investigate the spatial and temporal aspects of these neural systems.

Study Population:

Normal volunteer participants aged 18-65, who are in good general health will be recruited from the local community and studied under this minimal risk protocol.

Design:

Subjects will perform cognitive tasks in behavioral and/or neuroimaging sessions (fMRI or MEG).

Outcome Measures:

Behavior as performance on cognitive tasks, and brain activity (fMRI and MEG) will be combined to yield information about the neural correlates and processes underlying different aspects of human cognition including visual perception, memory, learning, emotion, social cognition, decision-making and attention.

• INCLUSION CRITERIA:
• Healthy adults, with at least a high school education, aged 18 to 65 years, will be recruited to participate in the study.
• Able to read and write in English to guarantee understanding of all written and spoken instructions, which are in English.

Exclusion criteria

Subjects will be excluded if they:

• have evidence of, or a history of:
• major medical, neurological or psychiatric illness
• serious head injury
• learning disability-drug or alcohol abuse or dependence in the past 3 months, except nicotine

-are taking prescription drugs or supplements that may affect brain function-

-have serious vision or hearing problems

In addition to the above, additional exclusion criteria apply for all MRI studies:

• Female subjects who are pregnant or have a positive pregnancy test 24 hours prior to an experiment will be excluded from neuroimaging studies.
• All subjects will be questioned prior to MRI scanning for possible occupational exposure to metal slivers or shavings, which may have become accidentally lodged in the tissues of the head or neck. Subjects with surgical clips or shrapnel in or near the brain or blood vessels, subjects with cochlear implants, subjects with any metallic body in the eye or CNS, and subjects with any form of implant wire or metal device which may concentrate radiofrequency fields will be excluded from MRI scanning experiments because of possible risks during MRI scanning. Those whose history is suggestive of such a problem will also be excluded from the MRI portion of the experiments. They may still participate in the behavioral and MEG experiments.
• Subjects unable to lie flat on their back for up to 3 hours may not be eligible to participate in MRI scans.