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Bell Labs Alumnus Receives Prestigious Japan Prize
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| Seiji Ogawa
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December 20, 2002 -
The Science and Technology Foundation of Japan has named Seiji Ogawa, a retired Bell Labs scientist, as one of this year’s recipients of its distinguished Japan Prize. The Japan Prize, which many in science consider second only to the Nobel Prize in prestige, is awarded to individuals whose achievements in science and technology are recognized as advancing the frontiers of knowledge and served the cause of peace and prosperity for mankind.
Ogawa was honored for his seminal work in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) done in the Biological Computation Research department at Bell Labs in the late 1980s.
FMRI had been developed into a non-invasive method for imaging areas of the brain during human mental operations. The method depicts the brain as a 3-D image, and shows the precise locations of increased activity. It can be used to image brain areas involved in higher cognitive functions, such as multiplying two numbers together or creating mental images. The origins of Ogawa’s research were rooted in facilitating the design of better computers through the understanding of biological neural networks.
"Dr. Ogawa's research has opened up entirely new directions in neuroscience," said Cherry Murray, senior vice president, Physical Sciences Research. "This kind of leading-edge research is enabled by the highly interactive and interdisciplinary environment for which Bell Labs is world renowned. As a former colleague of Dr. Ogawa's, and on behalf of the entire Bell Labs family, I congratulate him on this illustrious award."
When the human brain is working, various parts of the brain are activated depending on the task the brain is performing. These activated areas can be located in the brain image by using fMRI technology, and researchers can measure which parts of the brain are being used for the tasks that are being imposed on the brain.
The application of fMRI is being done in the whole area of brain research. The areas are in basic neuroscience to understand how a part of the brain works as a system; in modern psychology, which can eliminate black boxes attributed as functional sites in the brain, and in the clinical field, to monitor functional deficit or recovery from damages in the brain or to follow brain developments.
About his fMRI research, Ogawa once remarked, "One may think we've got a method to look into human consciousness."
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| Ogawa's fMRI technology in action: The three overhead images to the left show brain areas such as the primary visual cortex and the lateral geniculate nucleus that are activated by visual stimulus. The three images to the right show brain areas activated by visual mental imagery.
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FMRI technology based on principles formulated by Ogawa now dominates functional imaging of the brain in basic neuroscience research. It has also enabled hospitals around the world to obtain information about the functional state of the brains of patients who've had strokes, and those with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease, head injuries, and bipolar disorders. It is also being used in presurgical planning to map vital areas of the brain associated with skills such as language. Without the pioneering work of Ogawa, modern noninvasive functional imaging would not have been developed.
Ogawa retired from Bell Labs in 2001 after a 33-year career in which he also studied the structure and function of proteins by high-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and was a pioneer in the development of in vivo NMR, which is now known as magnetic resonance spectroscopy and used clinically. He currently is the director of the Ogawa Laboratories for Brain Function Research in Japan.
In addition to this latest achievement, the 68-year-old Ogawa has received such other honors as the GOLD Medal Award from the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine; the Biological Physics Prize from The American Physical Society; the Nakayama Prize from Nakayama Foundation for Human Science, Japan; was elected a senior member of the Institute of Medicine; and is a Fellow with the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.
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