Laboratory of attention and brain recovery at Washington University, St. Louis

The Attention and Brain Recovery Lab (ABRL), directed by Maurizio Corbetta, MD, is part of the Neuro-Imaging Laboratories (NIL) located in the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University in St. Louis. The NIL, directed by Marcus E. Raichle MD, is a multi-departmental (radiology, neurology, psychiatry, psychology, biomedical engineering, neuroscience) laboratory with over 100 researchers, divided in ten research groups interested in the neural basis of cognitive functions including attention, language, memory, emotions, and self-regulation in the adult and developing brain; the neuronal basis of brain hemodynamic signals; and the pathophysiology of a number of neurological and psychiatric disorders including stroke, Parkinson and Alzheimer diseases, depression, and schizophrenia. The NIL is part of the Research Division of Radiological Sciences that includes seven laboratories (Radiopharmaceutical Development, Electronic Radiology, Biomedical MR, Cardiac Imaging, Optical Imaging, Neuroimaging, Molecular Pharmacology) organized around the basic science disciplines in radiology. In the ABRL we use neuropsychological and psychophysical analysis of healthy and brain-damaged volunteers in conjunction with functional neuro-imaging techniques (functional magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI, and positron emission tomography, PET) to map brain-behavior relationships. We focus on two main lines of research: (a) the functional organization of attention systems in the brain; and (b) the neural correlates of behavioral recovery after stroke, especially attention and language. Recently, the laboratory has developed in collaboration with Larry Snyder, PhD, fMRI in awake-behaving non-human primates. The use of similar protocols with the same technique allows very useful comparisons of brain activity between human and monkeys, filling the gap between human functional neuro-imaging and animal electrophysiological research. These lines of research make use of the core facilities in the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology including two 3 T (Allegra, Trio) and one 1.5 T (Sonata) Siemens MRI scanners; one 953B Siemens PET scanner; several optical imaging systems; a common computer support group; and a mini-cyclotron for the production of radiopharmaceuticals.