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Welcome to the CNI Wiki
This site provides technical information for users of the Stanford Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging (CNI) facilities. All CNI users are invited to contribute their knowledge by editing content here. It is important that you verify the accuracy of any information that you post.
Follow this Getting Started link if you are new to the CNI and would like to learn about the basic facilities and how to get access and help in using the CNI facilities.
- General information is on the CNI administrative site
- To schedule time on the facilities, see the CNI resource scheduler.
If you are experiencing problems with the scanner or the peripherals, please consult the Troubleshooting section.
Mission Statement
Discoveries about the brain have implications for fields ranging from Business, Law, Psychology, and Education. The Stanford Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging (CNI) supports scientific investigations into the brain that make rigorous connections between neuroscience and society. Our Mission is to:
- Support neuroscience discovery for enhancing society
- Develop and disseminate cognitive and neurobiological imaging methods
- Create a structured, safe, and innovative teaching environment for human neuroscience research
People
Daily operations of the MRI facility are managed by Bob Dougherty (bobd@stanford.edu), the Research Director, and by Laima Baltusis (laimab@stanford.edu), the Facility Manager. Gunnar Schaefer is the chief Software Engineer and Michael Perry is the system administrator. Hua Wu (huawu@stanford.edu) is an MR Physicist on staff at the CNI, and Matt Middione is a visiting scholar from GE. Additional support for pulse-sequence development is provided by members of the Stanford MRSRL, including Adam Kerr and Kangrong Zhu. Charlene Wu (charlene.wu@stanford.edu) is the CNI TA; she is available for help by appointment. Reno Bowen has recently left us to join a local start-up, but continues to hang out and remains our official Python Guru.
The CNI operations are overseen by a faculty Advisory Board that includes representatives from the School of Humanities and Sciences, School of Education, Graduate School of Business and the School of Engineering. The Board receives input from colleagues in the Law School and CCRMA.
Stanford University oversight is through the office of the Vice-Provost and Dean of Research.
Facilities
The first CNI project was construction of the MR facility in the basement of Jordan Hall. The GE MR 750 scanner is installed and the facility is operational. The MR scanner was delivered on November 13th. See some pictures from that day.
In addition to the scanner, there is a mock scanner for training, experimental testing rooms, and integrated experimental equipment (displays and EEG). (See Facilities and Resources for more details and text useful when preparing sections of NIH or other grants.)
And then there is the famous Thai Cafe, located just across the hall. For those of you who don't know about it, see the TC on Yelp.
Computational Resources
The CNI has received funding from BIO-X Neuroventures for a high-powered compute server which will be used to provide computational resources to CNI users.
The CNI has recently started providing LXContainers and is moving away from the previous Virtual Machines deployment scheme.
Please visit the LXC Page for information about getting started with computational resources.