Mapping the developing brain: Clinical research series

This article is the latest in a series on clinical research at UNMC.

Tony Wilson, Ph.D., and his laboratory are currently studying healthy brains and their development using state-of-the-art, noninvasive brain imaging tools.

Dr. Wilson, associate professor in pharmacology and experimental neuroscience (PEN) and neurological sciences, has been a pioneer in the field of magnetoencephalography (MEG), using MEG-based imaging to identify the brain basis of severe psychiatric and neurological diseases — and to illuminate how therapeutic drugs and behavioral interventions modulate human brain function.

Now, he and his team are focusing on how healthy brain networks change and maturate as 9 year-old children develop into 14 year-old adolescents.

This project is the centerpiece of a $5.9 million grant funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Working with a consortium that includes the Mind Research Network of the University of New Mexico and an engineering and genetics group at Tulane University in Louisiana, Dr. Wilson and his team will help explore how the brain works and how this changes as children make a critical developmental transition.

“Here at UNMC we’re mapping out brain function in super high resolution, so we’ll be able to see electrical activity going through the brain in real time,” Dr. Wilson said. “Then, we will escort the children out to a new MRI scanner that was installed at Boys Town, where we’ll map out changes in structure in very fine detail.

“We will then be able to combine these maps of brain structure and function and evaluate whether they develop in parallel, or whether specific structures become more set, allowing functional pathways to become precisely ‘written on top.’ The questions are very exciting and we have a fantastic team at UNMC to pursue them.”

In addition to the consortium, the team includes Max Kurz, Ph.D., and Maurice Godfrey, Ph.D., of the Munroe-Meyer Institute; Elizabeth Heinrichs-Graham, Ph.D., of PEN and Soonjo Hwang, M.D., of psychiatry, as well as other investigators across Omaha (see sidebar).

In regard to the clinical impact, as Dr. Wilson puts it, the NSF is more interested in “big picture” questions, like how the brain actually works. They want to support science and ideas that may seem like science fiction today, but will someday have a major impact on our society and the way we approach disease and their treatment.

UNMC has been an international leader in developing clinical applications of MEG imaging, Dr. Wilson said, setting the standard for how data is analyzed to reveal the brain basis of neurological diseases, which then drives treatment development.

“Many of the most advanced techniques were partially developed here, or were first used on patient populations here. In applying these methods to patients with disease, we’ve been at the forefront.”