But despite the efforts and monies channeled to the cause, the human brain remains a source of scientific perplexity on many fronts. The baby boomers turn 60 this year, and the demand for neurodegenerative disease studies increases each time a senior citizen is added to the census. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (or fMRI) is the main tool that scientists currently use to study human brain activity. Such scanners devoted entirely to functional brain imaging have cropped up throughout the country over the past ten years giving scientists in neuroscience, psychology, radiology, and neurology the ability to watch you think. The maps they are drawing, along with the knowledge ascertained, will be the keys to unlocking the secrets of neurodegenerative disease and improving the quality of life for the elderly. With so much at stake and so far still to go, one would like to think that every leading medical institution in the country is armed with the requisite tools to forge ahead in this critical area of medical research. The country’s top medical school, however, our very own University of California, San Francisco didn’t house a scanner devoted entirely to functional brain imaging until last Saturday.

The med school’s tardiness in providing its scientists and doctors with an MRI center dedicated to functional brain imaging is a little disappointing, especially given the fact that the Brain Imaging Center at UC Berkeley purchased its second scanner last year and that campus doesn’t even have a medical school. But after a year of planning, a trans-Pacific journey and a 17 hour installation, with a month’s worth of set-up still to go, late Saturday night, a 28,000 pound, 3 Tesla scanner was delicately placed within UCSF’s Parnassus Campus. We applaud the efforts of those who helped make that happen. Better late than never UCSF!