Functional MRI: Origins (Introduction)

One of the Center’s first major successes after its move to the Navy Yard was the introduction of functional MRI (fMRI) with a pair of papers in 1991 and 1992. While conventional MRI provided structural images of the brain and other soft tissue in the body, fMRI could pinpoint functional changes in the brain associated with different types of neural activity. The studies, by lead authors Jack Belliveau and Kenneth Kwong, respectively, ushered in a new era of functional imaging and inspired application of the technique in a number of different fields.