Brain Imaging Center at Heart of Party

Pilar Wayne opened the leaded glass double doors to her Upper Newport Bay home on Sunday and hosted a party to raise money for the Brain Imaging Center at UC Irvine.

The afternoon affair brought 130 guests at $75 each into Wayne’s gilt-edged sunken living room and out onto her bougainvillea-wrapped pool patio.

It was humid outside, and inside the hot spot was a little table off in a corner where former Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater sat with Athalie Clarke. Guests trooped by to pay their respects to BIC founder Clarke and to Goldwater, whose daughter, Peggy Goldwater Clay, chaired the event.

“Thanks, Dad,” Clay said, as she stood before her attentive guests--one of several thankers and cajolers and introducers who took part in a half-hour program.

The heart--make that the brain--of the program was a one-two punch by Dr. William Bunney, chairman of the university’s psychiatry department, and Dr. Monty Buchsbaum, director of the 3-year-old research center.

The BIC is equipped with a cyclotron and a Positron Emission Tomography scanner--a PET, as Bunney and Buchsbaum called it--used to study alcoholism, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, epilepsy, strokes, autism and other disorders, and to make diagnoses for neurosurgery. It is one of about 15 such centers in the country but, as Bunney pointed out, the only one “from UCLA to the South Pole.”

Bunney briefly described a new center project that examines the brain functions of people with drug dependencies. “Where in the brain and what in the brain happens when somebody abuses cocaine?” he asked rhetorically--questions researchers will try to answer. They will also look for neurological evidence to link substance abuse with mental illness, or “co-morbidity,” as Bunney called that area of research.

Buchsbaum began by pointing to a large colorful photograph on an easel at his side. The picture looked like an aerial view of a psychedelic cockroach.

“This is my brain,” he said. And smiled.

After a somewhat more technical explanation of the PET scanner and its uses, the good doctor made his pitch for donations.

Among guests were founding president Jean Liechty, Betty and Richard Kasper, Carmen and Richard Kratz, Floss and Ed Schumacher, Sandra and Jerry Brodie and Meryl and Bob Bonney, who kicked off the post-program donations by handing Buchsbaum a check for $1,000.

Pamela Marin is a regular contributor to Orange County Life.