Brain Imaging

Playing Tetris may increase brain efficiency

harminka — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:11:13 -0500

Brain imaging shows playing Tetris leads to a thicker cortex and may also increase brain efficiency, according to research published in the open access journal BMC Research Notes. A research team based in New Mexico is one of the first to investigate the effects of practice in the brain using two image techniques.

Scientists read minds with infrared scan

harminka — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 08:05:54 -0600

Researchers at Canada's largest children's rehabilitation hospital have developed a technique that uses infrared light brain imaging to decode preference – with the goal of ultimately opening the world of choice to children who can't speak or move.

Study finds connections between genetics, brain activity and preference

harminka — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:59:46 -0500

A team of researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has used brain imaging, genetics and experimental psychology techniques to identify a connection between brain reward circuitry, a behavioral measurement of preference and a gene variant that appears to influence both.

MIT unlocks mystery behind brain imaging

harminka — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:56:02 -0500

In work that solves a long-standing mystery in neuroscience, researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have shown for the first time that star-shaped brain cells called astrocytes—previously considered bit players by most neuroscientists—make noninvasive brain scans possible.

Improving anxiety treatment through help of brain imaging

harminka — Fri, 09 May 2008 05:10:24 -0500

Wouldn’t it be nice if our doctors could predict accurately whether we would respond to a particular medication" This question is important because research studies provide information about how groups of patients tend to respond to treatments, but inevitably, differences among groups of patients with the same diagnosis mean that findings about groups of patients may not apply to individuals from those groups.

Scientists explore brain's reaction to potent hallucinogen

harminka — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:43:10 -0500

Brain-imaging studies performed in animals at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory provide researchers with clues about why an increasingly popular recreational drug that causes hallucinations and motor-function impairment in humans is abused.

Harvard researchers publish MRI images of genes in action in the living brain

harminka — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 07:03:16 -0500

Biologists have just confirmed what poets have known for centuries: eyes really are windows of the soul—or at least of the brain. In a new study published in the April 2008 print issue of The FASEB Journal, Harvard researchers describe the development of gene probe eye drops that—for the first time—make it possible to monitor and detect tissue repair in the brain of living organisms using MRI.

Introspective experiences inform inferences about similar people

harminka — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 08:32:38 -0500

Using fMRI scanning, researchers have found that the region of the brain associated with introspective thought is also accessed when inferring the thoughts of other people who are similar to oneself. However, this is not the case when considering those who are different politically, socially, or religiously.

High-tech interrogations may promote abuse

harminka — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 08:14:41 -0500

There is evidence that brain imaging technology is being used to interrogate suspected terrorists despite concerns that it may not be reliable, and that it might inadvertently promote abuse of detainees, according to a Penn State researcher.

Myth of runner's high revisited with brain imaging

harminka — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 12:33:29 -0600

Throughout the world, amateurs, experts and the media agree that prolonged jogging raises people's spirits. And many believe that the body’s own opioids, so called endorphins, are the cause of this. But in fact this has never been proved until now. Researchers at the Technische Universitet Munchen and the University of Bonn succeeded to demonstrate the existence of an ‘endorphin driven runner’s high’.

Culture influences brain function

harminka — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 07:37:14 -0600

People from different cultures use their brains differently to solve the same visual perceptual tasks, MIT researchers and colleagues report in the first brain imaging study of its kind.

Where thoughts of familiar objects occur inside human brain

harminka — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 05:52:21 -0600

A team of Carnegie Mellon University computer scientists and cognitive neuroscientists, combining methods of machine learning and brain imaging, have found a way to identify where people’s thoughts and perceptions of familiar objects originate in the brain by identifying the patterns of brain activity associated with the objects.