Latest Functional magnetic resonance imaging Stories

[Watch Video: Sesame Street Helps Brain Development] Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Using brain images, researchers are gaining insight into how humans process thought during real-life experiences. The same researchers studied brain scans of children and adults while they watched Sesame Street and found that a child’s brain changes as they develop intellectual abilities like reading and math. The scientists say that the novel use of brain imaging in this way...

Cell Press [ Watch The Video ] Humans perceive numerous categories of objects and actions, but where are these categories represented spatially in the brain? Researchers reporting in the December 20 issue of the Cell Press journal Neuron present their study that undertook the remarkable task of determining how the brain maps over a thousand object and action categories when subjects watched natural movie clips. The results demonstrate that the brain efficiently represents the diversity...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online One of the unique features of the human mind is its ability re-prioritize its goals and priorities as situations change and new information arises. This happens when you cancel a planned cruise because you need the money to repair your broke-down car, or when you interrupt your morning jog because your cell phone is ringing in your pocket. In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS),...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online If it seems as though some people are more confident in the decisions that they make than others, it's because of differences in how their brains are wired, a team of UK researchers have discovered. Writing in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Professor Ray Dolan and colleagues from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London (UCL) have pinpointed the specific regions of the brain that work together to...

Wellcome Trust Training human volunteers to control their own brain activity in precise areas of the brain can enhance fundamental aspects of their visual sensitivity, according to a new study. This non-invasive 'neurofeedback' approach could one day be used to improve brain function in patients with abnormal patterns of activity, for example stroke patients. Researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL used non-invasive, real-time brain imaging that enabled...

MRI shows changes in the brains of people with post-concussion syndrome (PCS), according to a new study published online in the journal Radiology. Researchers hope the results point the way to improved detection and treatment for the disorder. PCS affects approximately 20 percent to 30 percent of people who suffer mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI)—defined by the World Health Organization as a traumatic event causing brief loss of consciousness and/or transient memory dysfunction or...

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Chinese researchers at the University of Electronic Science and Technology in Chengdu, China have developed a method to transform brain waves into music that closely resembles something a human composer would write. According to their report in the open access journal PLOS ONE, they were able to use an electroencephalogram (EEG) to create the pitch and duration of a note, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to control...

Sandia National Laboratories Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories and the University of New Mexico are comparing supercomputer simulations of blast waves on the brain with clinical studies of veterans suffering from mild traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) to help improve helmet designs. Paul Taylor and John Ludwigsen of Sandia’s Terminal Ballistics Technology Department and Corey Ford, a neurologist at UNM’s Health Sciences Center, are in the final year of a four-year study of...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Alex Seaman is 20 years old, and for the last year and a half, he's been a patient at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability. He is awake and even has his eyes open at times, but Alex has no apparent awareness and is unable to talk or respond with his body. Alex suffered a severe head injury last April. He had been out celebrating a friend's 18th birthday and missed his bus stop. The bus was still moving when he jumped off and hit...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online We make snap judgments about other people all the time, whether we like to admit it or not. In speed dating, this is especially true because we are deciding someone's romantic potential in relatively few seconds. How we make those fast decisions is not very well understood, however. A research team from the California Institute of Technology (CALTECH) and Trinity College, Dublin has found that people make such speed-dating...