Magnetic Resonance Imaging MRI , too, had been developed, allowing scientists to take high resolution images of the brain.
In the late s Belliveau and colleagues at the Massachusetts General Hospital worked with industry to develop a technique β called dynamic susceptibility contrast imaging β to look at blood flowing in the brain. This involved the use of an MRI scanner that took pictures 20, times faster than conventional imagers.
By focusing on blood flow and subtracting images of the brain at rest from those at work, he thought, areas involved in cognitive processing would be revealed. Belliveau visited a discotheque equipment supplier and bought a strobe light to stimulate a response in the brains of a group of volunteers.
He then took images of their brains while they watched the flashing light and compared them with images taken when the strobe was switched off. But there was no difference. He tried again, this time with his guinea-pigs wearing goggles that displayed a chequerboard pattern. The primary visual cortex that responded to the strobe showed up perfectly. Meanwhile in Europe around 80 European research institutions and some from outside the EU are involved in a Human Brain Project, which will use supercomputer-based models and simulations to reconstruct a virtual human brain to develop new treatments for neurological conditions.
After graduating in he spent a year in Britain at the University of Cambridge on a Winston Churchill scholarship, then took a PhD in biophysics at Harvard, where he made his breakthrough. He married, in , Brigitte Poncelet, who survives him with a daughter.
