2016 13th Annual Conference of Society of Brain Mapping & Therapeutics (SBMT)

Twenty three years ago, working in the very space at Atkinson Morley’s Hospital used by Hounsfield to assemble the world’s first CT scanner - on a hill top in the south London suburb of Wimbledon - I was one of the scientists who conceived of mathematical and engineering steps that led to the Diffusion Anisotropy Imaging patent (US 5,560,360) and so contributed to the birth of Diffusion Tensor Imaging - DTI - the most advanced method for mapping the human brain. Working as a neurosurgery resident, applying my background from my PhD work at Harvard, building a team of physicists, neuroscientists and clinicians we produced the very first tractogram that followed a curving bending tract through the brain. Across the Atlantic, in my hometown of Bethesda, Maryland, Drs. Peter Basser and Dennis LeBihan quite separately raced along the same path. The scientific and technological result of this common effort has spawned 10,000 peer reviewed publications and drawn billions of research funding while unlocking a view into the human brain that is as beautiful and seemingly magical as it is fundamentally transformational in science of the brain. Over the 14 years since its founding, the Society for Brain Mapping and Therapeutics (SBMT) has sought to foster more such dramatic advances by bringing about a pioneering transformation of the way in which leaders and innovators interact in advancing the science and technology of brain science. The SBMT draws it own structure from what is most effective about the human brain itself. It has a dynamic focus - the advancement of our understanding the brain and nervous system - but it supports that focus by drawing on the widest possible array of inputs and sources.