Yesterday President Obama announced that he has asked Congress to spend $100 million next year on a new project to map the human brain in hopes of finding cures for Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy and traumatic injuries.

This national initiative has local ties to the University of Minnesota. Kamil Ugurbil, Ph.D., director of the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research (CMRR), was at the White House for the announcement.

Ugurbil is one of 15 people on the working group that will develop the scientific strategy for the BRAIN Initiative, which stands for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies.

MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, is a test that uses both a magnetic field and radio waves to reveal details of the body’s internal structures without radiation. It’s known for the clear, detailed images it’s able to provide and for its utility in diagnosing injuries to joint structures, soft tissues and bones, as well as brain and internal organ diseases.

Invented in the 1970s, the MRI has proved itself useful over time. The 1 million-plus MRI scans occurring each week worldwide use radio waves sent out during the scan to help manipulate the magnetic position of one of the body’s basic building blocks – the hydrogen atom. These positions are then measured by an antenna and sent to a computer to be translated into an image …

MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, is an area of immense potential for understanding disease. At the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, researchers are using the tool to find new ways to “see” the nation’s leading cause of disability, arthritis, in its earliest stages.

Their hope is to help alleviate arthritis by having treatments that can delay or reverse some of the early degenerative changes in the joint cartilage.

“When we age, our joints don’t perform as well as when we were younger and they become more at risk for damage from repetitive work, athletic activities or a single traumatic injury,” said University of Minnesota Physician sports medicine expert Elizabeth Arendt, M.D., a professor in the U of M Department of Orthopaedic Surgery.  “Arthritis is a very significant health concern for our society, involving costs to treat the disease as well as time away from work.”

Arendt and University of Minnesota Physicians radiologist Jutta Ellerman, M.D., with collaborators Mikko Nissi and Michael Benson at the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research (CMRR) are studying how to best use more powerful MRI magnets and higher resolution images to see some of the very first signs of breakdown in cartilage.

Because cartilage breakdown often occurs in the very small area between two bone structures, it can be difficult to see the wear and tear that has occurred until the problem is severe.

A clearer view of that small area, Arendt said, means a chance at halting arthritis’s irreversible damage to cartilage before it becomes an even larger problem.

Tomorrow, check back to Health Talk for a look at how MRI records images that are giving University of Minnesota physicians an unprecedented look inside the human body.

Since September 2010, researchers at the University of Minnesota have been working to map human brain circuitry in 1,200 healthy adults as part of the Human Connectome Project (HCP).  The effort is being done in collaboration with Washington University in St. Louis.

Utilizing noninvasive neuroimaging methods, the HCP looks to set a new course for human science, revolutionizing how we perform studies examining brain circuitry changes during development, aging or in patients suffering from neurologic and psychiatric disorders.

For the first two years of the much-anticipated five-year project, the focus was on data acquisition and analysis, which primarily took place at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Magnetic Resonance Research (CMRR).

Imagine for a moment that you woke up this morning unable to completely control your speech or your movements.

You realize it’s not a question of strength or disability – your mind is clear and your extremities feel normal. You simply lack control over your own body’s movements.

This is the battle fought each day by more than 150,000 patients suffering from ataxia, a set of symptoms caused by a dysfunction in the cerebellum, the area in the back of the brain responsible for coordination of movement, speech and senses.

People with ataxia experience uncontrolled, uncoordinated movements in the way they walk, talk and move their extremities.

Fortunately, researchers are working hard to find effective treatments.  The challenge is detecting the condition early enough, or in some cases, before symptoms even present.  Enter the University of Minnesota.

With the aid of magnetic resonance spectroscopy, Gulin Oz, Ph.D., an ataxia researcher at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Magnetic Resonance Research (CMRR), is able to detect cellular changes in the cerebellum before they cause further irreversible damage.

“At CMRR, we use a technique called magnetic resonance spectroscopy to study the brain chemistry in patients with ataxia,” said Oz.  “We take advantage of the sensitivity that high field MR scanners provide and utilize technology we’ve developed in-house to obtain a wealth of information about brain chemistry.”

Oz uses high-powered MRI scanners to measure chemicals found within the cerebellum to detect the progression or slowing of ataxia. By monitoring changes in the cerebellum over time, Oz believes the effort could lead to earlier detection of ataxia.

The MRI scanners are also able to pick up ataxia biomarkers and monitor the effectiveness of trial drugs on the ataxia disease.

“Using chemical markers we hope to detect the earliest disease-related changes in the brain – while the neurons are struggling, but before they die, when interventions may rescue them,” said Oz. “In addition, we plan to use these chemical markers in clinical trials of neuroprotective treatments.  Such objective markers that can inform us about the status of the brain non-invasively are greatly needed to assess potential new treatments.”

For more on CMRR research visit their website at www.cmrr.umn.edu