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The kind of work I do is to apply
magnetic resonance imaging techniques
to understanding human behavior.
Some of that relates to normal development
and normal aging, and some of that is
to focus on high risk or factors that might lead somebody
to have a psychiatric illness or a behavioral problem.
One of our most recent projects has been to look at
returning veterans and to look at the incidents
of traumatic brain injury and the kind of changes
the brain has undergone with exposure
to mild traumatic brain injury.
This is an area of great interest both
to the civilian population and the veteran population
because there are ongoing psychiatric problems
and cognitive problems in many of the individuals
who have multiple, mild traumatic brain injuries.
Well the hope for our work is that it will be applied
to clinical interventions, that is that we would expect that if
we could find biomarkers or neurobiological changes that
highlight risk, that these then could be used to provide early
intervention in individuals who might then be saved
a lot of clinical pain in the future.
The Brain Institute has been really very instrumental in my
getting to know many individuals across the University of Utah
campus, both in the basic neurosciences and as well as
other clinical sciences, and has really provided an
infrastructure that has allowed us to explore mutual interests.