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>> Russ: I'm Russ Poldrack; I'm the Director
of the Imaging Research Center at UT Austin.
I'm also a Professor in the Departments of Psychology
and Neurobiology, and I've been at UT since September of 2009.
And at the Imaging Research Center we do research using
magnetic resonance imaging primarily to image the function
and structure of the brain to try
to understand both how the brain works in its normal state
and how it stops working in various types of disorders
such as psychiatric or neurological disorders.
The main difference between the MRI scanner that we have here
and the standard clinical MRI scanner has to do
with the strength of the magnet.
Most clinical MRI scanners are 1.5 tesla, that's a measure
of the strength of the magnetic field; this one is 3 tesla
so the magnet is about twice as strong as the standard magnet.
And what that lets us do is see aspects of brain function
with more clarity than one could
with the standard clinical MRI scanner.
It's really revolutionized the way that we understand the brain
on both the normal function of the brain and how it goes wrong
in psychiatric and neurological disorders.
So what we can do with MRI is particularly look
at the function of the brain.
You know, up until MRI was invented we really didn't have
any way to look at how the normal brain functions without,
you know, cutting and looking inside of it.
With MRI we can put anyone into an MRI scanner
and watch their brain as they engage in mental tasks.
So we can look inside the person's brain and see
which parts of the brain are active when a person engages
in a particular type of mental function.
And what this lets us do is understand how the brain works,
which parts of the brain, do what.
Then what we can do is look and see what happens
in a particular type of disorder,
so in a psychiatric disorder or a neurological disorder,
which parts of the brain are malfunctioning,
and that can help us both understand what causes those
disorders and how we might go about treating them.
What we often do is have them do particular mental tasks.
For example, have them read words
or have them decide different things about pictures,
and using that we can see which particular parts
of their brain are involved in doing those different things.
And then what we can do is look at what happens in people
with different disorders to see which particular parts
of their brains seem to be malfunctioning and we can use
that to try to help us understand both what's causing
those disorders and how we might go about treating them.
What we really want to do is build the center
to become a resource for, you know, a broad range
of research across campus.
Right now the center is focused
on brain research and brain imaging.
What we'd like to do is expand it out so
that a much broader range of researchers could get involved.
So, for example, there's a growing body of cancer research
on the UT campus and in Austin and what we'd
like to do is provide resources
to allow those cancer researchers
to also take advantage of MRI and of other types
of imaging techniques that can be useful
for measuring both the mechanisms
of cancer and cancer treatment.
So in the next year and a half we'll be moving
to the Norman Hackerman [assumed spelling] Building right
in the middle of the UT campus
and one thing that'll do is provide us with additional space
where we can add different imaging techniques that'll,
again, let us really broaden the scope
of the imaging that's going on at the UT campus.