Dr. Bruce Pike is Killam Professor of Neurology and Neurosurgery, James McGill Professor of Biomedical Engineering and one of the Chercheurs Nationaux of the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec. He is also Director of the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre. Dr. Pike investigates magnetic resonance imaging methods and applications for basic and clinical neuroscience research. As his primary focus, he detects and measures the physiological modulations that are associated with fluctuations in neuronal activity using functional MRI. Functional MRI can detect changes in blood oxygenation and tissue perfusion with a high temporal and spatial resolution. It also provides a powerful tool for studying basic brain physiology in healthy subjects and pathophysiology in diseases such as stroke and Alzheimer's Disease.

Recently, Dr. Pike used his novel functional MRI methods to determine for the first time the relationship between regional cerebral blood flow and oxygen consumption in the cortex over a broad range of activation and inhibition conditions in both healthy subjects and epilepsy patients. Dr. Pike has also developed a quantitative MRI technique termed magnetization transfer (MT) imaging that probes the magnetic interaction between macromolecules and water of brain tissue. Using MT imaging, his group has revealed focal pathology in a group of multiple sclerosis patients that precedes the development of conventional MRI detected MS lesions by up to two years.

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E-mail: Bruce Pike
Web Site: McConnell Brain Imaging Centre