URBANA, Ill. (Chambana Today) — A groundbreaking research study focused on advancing the world’s understanding of the human brain is underway in Urbana — and local residents are invited to participate.

The Champaign-Urbana Population Study (CUPS) is a joint effort by Carle Health and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, launched in 2021 and continuing to grow. More than 100 volunteers have already taken part in this effort, which utilizes cutting-edge brain imaging to create one of the most advanced public neuroimaging databases in the world.

The study uses the Siemens MAGNETOM Terra 7 Tesla (7T) MRI, one of the most powerful MRI machines currently available for clinical research, to collect high-resolution images of the brain’s structure and function. The resulting data will support future medical research both locally and internationally and be made available to researchers in a de-identified, public database.

“It’s not often that a person has the opportunity to say they contributed to a research study that impacts our knowledge of the brain’s structure and function,” said Bruce Damon, PhD, co-director of the Carle Illinois Advanced Imaging Center and director of Clinical Imaging Research for the Stephens Family Clinical Research Institute at Carle Health. “But in this case, the participants in this study can do just that.”

Volunteers must be adults living in or near the Champaign-Urbana area and willing to participate in MRI sessions. Their contributions are helping to lay the groundwork for new discoveries in neuroscience and innovative medical treatments that could benefit patients worldwide.

CUPS is sponsored by the Stephens Family Clinical Research Institute at Carle Foundation Hospital and supported by the University of Illinois’s Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute and the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.