A recognition of excellence

The Montreal Neurological Institute, a world-renowned teaching and research institute for the neurosciences at McGill, has won a major grant from the United States Institutes of Health. The $9 million (U.S.) is to be used to develop the world's first Paediatric Neuroanatomy Atlas, a project which aims to map the development of the human brain from birth to age 18 through Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).

The Atlas, which will contain information on the brain from over five hundred children, will also be available on the Internet for other researchers to use.

The project involves McGill researchers Dr. Bruce Pike and Dr. Tomas Paus, both neuroscientists at the MNI, and Dr. Alan Evans, the project's lead investigator and a researcher at the MNI's McConnell Brain Imaging Centre. "The National Institutes of Health determined that we have a unique means of analysing data on such a large scale," says Dr. Evans. "This contract is a recognition of the MNI's world-wide leadership in the neurosciences."

The project will include data collected by seven American research centres, including the Children's Hospital in Boston, the University of California at Los Angeles, and the University of California at Irvine. The project's duration will last at least seven years, with the possibility that its scope will be enlarged to include the brain development of young adults.