[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Seiji-Ogawa_opt.jpg” caption=”Seiji Ogawa”]Seiji Ogawa, recognized for revolutionizing the field of functional magnetic resonance imaging, will present a lecture on Wednesday, Oct. 22 entitled “A New Aspect in Functional MRI to Study Brain Function: Functional Site-Site Interaction”.

In conjunction with the Gairdner Foundation and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, McMaster University, Hamilton Health Sciences and St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton, the lecture will take place at 12 p.m. in Room 1A5 of the Ewart Angus Centre in the McMaster Health Sciences Centre.

Ogawa is one of this year's recipients of the Gairdner Foundation International Award recognizing achievement in medical research for his development of blood oxygenation dependent imaging, which is used extensively to study brain function. fMRI has been used to map the visual, auditory and sensory regions of the living human brain. It is a revolutionary tool for neuroscience and has become essential for investigating higher order cognitive function and brain interconnectivity and plasticity.

Ogawa is director of Ogawa Laboratories for Brain Function Research at the Hamano Life Science Research Foundation in Tokyo, Japan and visiting professor, Biophysics/Physiology Department at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York.

He trained as an applied physicist in Tokyo and as a PhD chemist at Stanford. He is the recipient of a number of awards in magnetic resonance, is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and this year was awarded the Japan International Prize.

For a list of the other winners of the 2003 Gairdner Foundation Award visit http://www.gairdner.org/newwinner.html