11 - Neuroimaging

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Functional neuroimaging techniques, such as functional MRI (fMRI), positron emission tomography, and others have proven to be powerful methods for examining brain function that have led to major advances in our understanding of the brain and various neurological conditions. fMRI has provided researchers with a non-invasive tool to delineate basic neurophysiological processes and found use in clinical applications such as pre-surgical mapping of important functional areas that can guide neurosurgical cases. More thought-provoking examples include identifying a distinct response to romantic love, different from sexual arousal (Aron et al. 2005) and the development of an fMRI-based neural feedback system to improve management of pain (deCharms et al. 2005).

Since 1992 there has been an exponential increase in the number of papers published on fMRI (Bandettini 2007). This is in part due to the fact that fMRI as a technique only began to be used in the early 1990s but also due to the ready availability of MRI scanners capable of conducting these studies. Correspondingly, there has been an explosion of media coverage of this branch of neuroscience, driven in part by the compelling portrayal of these results with the pictures and movies to which these techniques readily lend themselves (Racine et al. 2005). Neuroscientific explanations combined with richly detailed and beautiful pictures depicting the results from fMRI experiments have been shown to increase the perceived validity of a finding even when the underlying science is questionable (McCabe & Castel 2008; Weisberg et al. 2008).