Latest Neuroimaging Stories

A new type of diagnostic imaging - which can better differentiate benign lung lesions from those which are cancerous - could be used to prevent unnecessary surgery by enabling more accurate diagnosis of the disease. A study by Belgian researchers, which will be presented today (25 September 2011) at the European Respiratory Society's Annual Congress in Amsterdam, found that the new technique can more accurately determine whether people have the disease when compared with the current method...

   Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have created a groundbreaking brain-imaging process that allows them to 'see' moving images inside people's minds.  The researchers had volunteers watch movie clips as a scanner watched their brains. Then, using this brain activity, a computer made a rough reconstruction of what the study participants viewed. As the test subjects thought of a video, the scientists were able to 'see' it on screen, the researchers reported on...

Machine's magnetic field pushes fluid in the inner ear's balance organ A team of researchers says it has discovered why so many people undergoing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), especially in newer high-strength machines, get vertigo, or the dizzy sensation of free-falling, while inside or when coming out of the tunnel-like machine. In a new study published in Current Biology online on Sept. 22, a team led by Johns Hopkins scientists suggests that MRI's strong magnet pushes on fluid...

UC Berkeley researchers decode and reconstruct dynamic visual experiences, in this case Hollywood movie trailers Imagine tapping into the mind of a coma patient, or watching one's own dream on YouTube. With a cutting-edge blend of brain imaging and computer simulation, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, are bringing these futuristic scenarios within reach. Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and computational models, UC Berkeley researchers have...

When making decisions based on multiple, interdependent factors, we choose based on how these factors correlate with each other, and not based on an ad hoc rule of thumb or through trial and error as was previously thought, according to research funded by the Wellcome Trust. The study, published today in the journal Neuron, identifies the regions of the brain involved in tracking this correlation, which include the insula and the anterior cingulate cortex, both of which have previously...

Recent PET-measurements in Turku, Finland, show that the GSM mobile phone electromagnetic field suppresses glucose metabolism in temporoparietal and anterior temporal areas of the hemisphere next to the antenna. Thirteen young healthy males were exposed to the GSM signal for 33 minutes. The study, initiated by Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience (CCN) at University of Turku, was methodologically unique combining the expertise in brain imaging (National PET-Center and CCN), measurements and...

Research conducted by Boston College neuroscientist Sean MacEvoy and colleague Russell Epstein of the University of Pennsylvania finds evidence of a new way of considering how the brain processes and recognizes a person’s surroundings, according to a paper published in the latest issue of Nature Neuroscience. For the study, MacEvoy and Epstein used functional magnetic resonance image (fMRI) to help them identify how the brain figures out where it is in the world (scene recognition)....

Twenty years after the publication of the first human study using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)* - a technique to measure activity in the brain through the flow of blood - the Wellcome Trust has published a report providing reflections on the field of human functional brain imaging. The Wellcome Trust report assesses the key developments in human functional brain imaging and examines the role it has played as a funder. Supporting neuroscience research has been a cornerstone...

Software Suite Provides (Extensive) Toolkit for Quantification and Post-Processing on Aspect's M2(TM) Compact MRI System for Pre-clinical Imaging TORONTO, Canada, SHOHAM, Israel, and BOSTON, MA, Sept. 6, 2011 /PRNewswire/ - Aspect Imaging, the leader in high-performance permanent magnet systems for pre-clinical research, today announced its agreement with inviCRO to distribute the VivoQuant(TM) software suite for pre-clinical MRI image analysis and quantification with Aspect's...

In an effort to understand what happens in the brain when a person reads or considers such abstract ideas as love or justice, Princeton researchers have for the first time matched images of brain activity with categories of words related to the concepts a person is thinking about. The results could lead to a better understanding of how people consider meaning and context when reading or thinking. The researchers report in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience that they used...