News

A new article of which the neuroimaging studies had been carried out in UMRAM has been published in International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education. The article is produced from  the doctoral thesis by Dr. Gül Kuruyer which is entitled “The Effect of Enriched Reading Program on the Cognitive Processes of Students with Reading Strength and Their Neural Structures” and supervised by Prof. Dr. Kader Karlı Oguz and Prof. Dr. Hayati Akyol. Arzu Ceylan Has contributed to the investigation during the collection and analysis of data related to neuroimaging. The main purpose of the current study is to explain the effect of an enrichment reading program on the cognitive processes and neural structures of children experiencing reading difficulties. The current study was carried out in line with a single-subject research method and the between-subjects multiple probe design belonging to this method. This research focuses on a group of eight students with reading difficulties. Within the context of the study, memory capacities, attention spans, reading-related functional MRI activation and white matter pathways of the students were determined before and after the application of the enrichment reading program. This determination process was carried out in two stages. Neuro-imaging was performed in the first stage and in the second stage the students’ cognitive processes and neural structures were investigated in terms of focusing attention and memory capacities by using the following tools: Stroop Test TBAG Form, Auditory Verbal Digit Span Test-Form B, Cancellation Test and Number Order Learning Test. The results obtained show that the enrichment reading program resulted in an improvement in the reading profiles of the students having reading difficulties in terms of their cognitive processes and neural structures. When the studies dealing with white matter and activation are examined, it is seen that they have mostly focused on adults and compared neural structures of good and poor readers. Within the context of the current study, since each student’s state before the implementation of the reading program was accepted as a unique starting point, it has been possible to investigate and explain the effect of the enrichment reading program on the students’ neural structures in an individualized way. When we examine the results reported by neuro-imaging studies focusing on reading and reading, we see that there is some degree of consistency, but also differentiation between the findings. The reason for this can be age, gender, or the complex and multi-faceted structure of reading.The full article can be found here: 

This year we have celebrated new year early by combining it with the Aysel Sabuncu Brain Research Center 2016 Scientific Meeting. The day started with Dr. Emre Guven’s excellent talk on compressed sensing. Short four talks from the researcher of our center followed an enlightening talk by Prof. Turgay Dalkara on discovering brain. Attendance exceed the capacity of our conference room. Later 38 posters were presented and dinner was served. The event lasted about 6 hours and the total attendance was over 100 people. UMRAM and Aysel Sabuncu Brain Research Center would like to thank all speakers, and poster presenters and well as guests of the event.

UMRAM is partnering with ASELSAN to develop novel imaging technologies for Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI), together with German partners University of Lübeck and Nano4Imaging. This Turkish-German 2+2 collaborative project was chosen as one of the 9 projects to be funded (out of 130 applications), after scientific evaluations by both countries. The 3-year project will be funded by TUBITAK on the Turkish side and by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) on the German side. The main goal of the project is to develop MPI as a rapid and safe interventional imaging technique. The principal investigator of the project at Bilkent is Asst. Prof. Emine Ulku Saritas. This project was recently publicized in the Turkish news agencies. See, for example, this link.

Read more: ISMRM success stories 

Katja Doerschner has been promoted to be Associate Professor in Bilkent University. Dr. Doerschner has been with Bilkent University since September 2008. She is currently on leave of absence and working in University of Giessen with funds obtained by the Sofia Kovalevskaya Award received from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Prof. Kamil Ugurbil of University of Minnesota received 15th Vehbi Koc prize. He visited UMRAM one day before the ceremony. Dr. Ugurbil is a very well known scientist in the field of MRI. He has many significant contributions to MRI including the invention of functional MRI. He is author and co-author on more than 400 high-impact journal papers. As one indicator of his contributions, his h-index is 93 as of today. Here is short video describing his story.

Emine Ulku Saritas of UMRAM received “Bilim Akademisi Genç Bilim Insanları Ödül Programı (BAGEP)” award of the Science Academy for her contributions to Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Magnetic Particle Imaging. This year there were a total of 48 awardees in all subject areas. The science academy was formed in Nov 2011 as an independent non-governmental organization to promote, pactice and uphold the principles of scientific merit, freedom and integrity. Ergin Atalar of UMRAM is a member of the Science Academy.

UMRAM has moved to a new building!!  With the donation received from Aysel Sabuncu, a new brain research center has been established. UMRAM moved to this building and resumed its full operation in a larger and nicer place. 3T MRI scanner is fully operational. UMRAM continues to have open access policy. Looking forward to see all the researchers who has interest in MRI research at UMRAM.

We have celebrated the coming year of 2016 in UMRAM traditionally. We would like to thank everybody who came celebrate it with us. We wish all our members and alike to have a wonderful, successful year.

ASELSAN and Bilkent University UMRAM have partnered in a colloborative project that aims to significantly reduce MRI scan times to improve patient comfort and monitoring efficiency while reducing healthcare costs. For more information: http://www.trthaber.com/haber/saglik/mrda-kalma-suresi-azaliyor-219314.html http://w3.bilkent.edu.tr/www/mr-suresi-kisalacak/

ASELSAN Research Center and Bilkent University have established a collaboration to develop clinically feasible applications of Compressive Sensing Magnetic Resonance Imaging (CS-MRI), which has been accelerated by the recent agreement between ASELSAN and Bilkent University – National Magnetic Resonance Research Center (UMRAM). The project aims to reduce the scan-times nearly 5-fold for major clinical MRI applications, enabling wider clinical use of Compressive Sensing techniques. Accelerating MRI scans potentially improves patient comfort and imaging resolution, while reducing scan costs.