Our Research

• CONTACT
  Martinos Imaging Center
  Main Street @ Albany Street
  Cambridge, MA 02139
  MIT Address: Bldg 46-1171
  
  phone: 617-324-2702
  fax: 617-324-2701
  email: mri-team@mit.edu



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• Brain activation of left frontal language area (red) varies considerably between three subjects.  Images courtesy of Evelina Fedorenko

As a core facility, the imaging center is used by many investigators and supports a wide variety of basic and translational research projects.  Major research interests within the user community include the following:

• Brain mechanisms of perception, especially vision
• Neural basis of higher cognitive functions such as language, memory, emotion, social cognition, executive function.
• Reading and dyslexia
• Neural basis of autism
• Neural basis of psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders
• Neurofeedback as a potential therapy
• Development of new technologies for brain imaging

 

Principal Investigators

Elfar Adalsteinsson, PhD
Medical imaging with magnetic resonance, focusing on optimal methods for acquisition, reconstruction, and processing of in vivo imaging data

Emilio Bizzi, MD, PhD
Neural basis of motor control

Robert Desimone, PhD
Brain mechanisms underlying attention, memory and executive control

James DiCarlo, MD, PhD
Visual object recognition

John Gabrieli, PhD
Organization of memory, thought, and emotion in the human brain, and their disruption by developmental, neurological and psychiatric disorders

Satrajit Ghosh, PhD

Neuroinformatics, development of tools for neuroimaging, and applications to traumatic brain injury, psychiatric illness and normal brain function.

Ann Graybiel, PhD
Basal ganglia and the neural basis of habitual behavior

Alan Jasanoff, PhD
Development of MRI contrast agents for imaging brain activity with molecular specificity; application of MRI to study the brain's reward mechanisms

Nancy Kanwisher, PhD
Functional organization of the brain, including high level vision and language; brain plasticity following visual deprivation; comparison of autistic and typically developing children

Earl Miller, PhD
Neural basis of memory and cognition

Aude Oliva, PhD
Real world scene understanding, neural correlates of scene and space perception

Dimitrios Pantazis, PhD
Magnetoencephalography (MEG), application of signal processing theory to the development of new tools for MEG data analysis

Tomaso Poggio, PhD
Computational modeling of brain function

Drazen Prelec, PhD
Neuroeconomics, psychology and neural mechanisms of decision making

Rebecca Saxe, PhD
Psychological and neural mechanisms of social cognition

Pawan Sinha, PhD
Mechanisms of visual object discovery and recognition

Mriganka Sur, PhD
Cortical development, plasticity and dynamics

Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli
Imaging of psychiatric disorders

External Users

Nadine Gaab (Boston Children's Hospital)

Cognitive development in children, language learning and dyslexia

Heather Urry (Tufts University)

Neural mechanisms of emotion

Heidi Thermenos (Massachussets General Hospital)

Neuroimaging in psychiatric patients