Biomedical Informatics Research Network - Irvine [BIRN- Irvine]

PIs: Steven Potkin

Related People: Gus Alva, Veronica Castro, Jim Fallon, Zhiyu He, Yi Jin, David Keator, Raymond Klefstad, Hyo Jong Lee, Thang Nguyen, Rubin Pham, Hal Stern, Derek Taylor, Bennett Thede, Liv Trondsen, Jessica Turner, David Van Dyk, Jackie Walter, Dingying Wei

Other Institutions: Cal Tech, Duke, Harvard, University of Iowa, John Hopkins University, MIT, Ohio State University, Stanford, UCLA, UCSD, UCSF, UNC, UNM, UTMEM, WUSTL, Yale

Funding: National Institutes of Health, National Center for Research Resources, Department of Health and Human Services

[web site]

The Function BIRN test bed is working to understand the underlying causes of schizophrenia and to develop new treatments for the disease. The effort brings together researchers in different aspects of functional neuroimaging to apply recently developed multi-modal and interdisciplinary techniques to investigate the neural substrates of schizophrenia. The scientific goals of the project are to determine the role of frontal and temporal lobe dysfunction in schizophrenia, and to assess the impact of treatments on functional brain abnormalities.