| The Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL | |
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| Established | 2006 |
| Director | Professor R. Dolan |
| Location | London, United Kingdom |
| Website | Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging |
The Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London (incorporating the Leopold Muller Functional Imaging Laboratory and the Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience) is an interdisciplinary centre for neuroimaging research based in London, United Kingdom.
Principal investigators working at the Centre include Professors Ray Dolan, Jon Driver, Richard Frackowiak, Chris Frith, Karl Friston, Eleanor Maguire, Cathy Price, and Geraint Rees. The Centre is located in Queen Square in the Bloomsbury area of Central London, adjacent to the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery.
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'The Functional Imaging Laboratory (FIL)', was founded in 1994 following a major grant award from the Wellcome Trust. This provided for a new building, capital equipment and core staff support. The award enabled a core group of scientists, based at the Medical Research Council Cyclotron Unit, at the Hammersmith Hospital to relocate their activity to a central London site, within UCL.
In 1994 the principal neuroimaging research tool was positron emission tomography (PET). Over the next decade functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) became the primary investigative tool of the FIL, leading to PET decommissioning in 2004. Currently, the investigative tools of the laboratory include functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) magneto-encephalography (MEG) and electro-encephalography (EEG). The laboratory has continued to enjoy core Wellcome Trust infrastructure support through major grant awards in 1999 and 2004.
In 2006, following a successful bid for a Strategic Award the laboratory was awarded Wellcome Trust Centre status, and is now known as the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL. In January 2007 a team from the Centre published research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which concluded that some people with amnesia may not only have difficulty recalling the past but also have difficulty imagining future experiences.[1] In May 2007 a team led by Ben Seymour of the Centre published research in the Journal of Neuro-science which showed that that losing money, or anticipating such a loss, stimulates the striatum in the brain, a circuit involved in the processing of pain and fear.[2] In June 2008 a team from the Centre published research in the journal Neuron showing that the ventral striatum region of the brain is more active when subjects chose unusual objects in controlled tests.[3] In December 2010 a team from the Centre published research in the journal Nature Neuroscience which showed that humans see the world differently according to the size of the visual cortex in their brain.[4]
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