Research conducted in the fMRIF spans a wide range of topics from anatomical studies of the mylenation patterns of human cortex to the genetically driven variation in the response of brain regions underlying human emotional behavior. Several examples of research conducted at the fMRIF are included here. Further detail on individual investigators is also available. 

The Genetics of Mental Disease

In this work Ahmad Hariri, a post-doctoral fellow working in the Cognitive Brain Disorders Branch, showed that a polymorphism in the human serotonin transporter gene, SLC6A4, is associated with greater activity in the amygdala when individuals with this allele view fearful stimuli. The figure below illustrates this finding by comparing the BOLD response (measured with the 3 Tesla FMRIF scanner) between two groups of subjects, one of whom had the modified allele and the others who did not.

This result is notable since it provides a link between the increased fear and anxiety reported and measured physiologically in individuals who are born with this allele and other members of the public. Such genetically driven variation in the function of the serotonin transporter function and subsequent amygdala activity may contribute to the abnormalities of the serotonergic system in depression and suicide. This combination of functional mapping and genetic analysis is likely to be a potent tool in our understanding of the neurobiology of mental illness.

Distributed Object Encoding

Jim Haxby and the Laboratory of Cognition at the NIMH is an active participant in one of the most intensely debated issues in cognitive neuroscience today: the functional architecture of neural representation in the ventral temporal cortex. Haxby et al. (2001) used the fMRI F's GE 3 Tesla scanner to measure the  hemodynamicchanges in subject while viewing several categories of objects.

A distinct pattern of response was found for each stimulus category. The distinctiveness of the response to a given category was not due simply to the regions that responded maximally to that category, because the category being viewed also could be identified on the basis of the pattern of response when those regions were excluded from the analysis. These results indicate that the representations of faces and objects in ventral temporal cortex are widely distributed and overlapping.