MRI diffusion imaging demonstrating individual variation of primary motor cortex connectivity.
Credit: Scott Grafton, Matt Cieslak

 Research

 About BIC

The UCSB Brain Imaging Center is a core research facility of the UCSB campus dedicated to understanding the structure, function, and dynamical properties of the human brain. Directed by Dr. Scott Grafton, the center supports a state of the art 3-Tesla (3T) Siemens PRISMA magnet resonance imaging system with a 64 channel head coil as well as MRI compatible high density electroencephalography hardware. The main purpose of the Center is to support basic research in cognitive/mind neuroscience using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Functional MRI (fMRI) is a non-invasive technique for indirectly measuring regional activity of the brain. UCSB faculty, post docs, and graduate students are using this technology to study the neural basis of attention, memory, category learning, motor control, spatial navigation, mentalizing, mind wandering and laterality of brain function (among many other topics).