From the category archives:

fMRI

Global and local fMRI signals driven by neurons defined optogenetically by type and wiring

by Aziz on June 3, 2010

in Journal Club, fMRI

Ars Technica has a nice writeup about a paper in Nature which isolates the BOLD signal from a specific type of neuron:
With everything in place, the researchers confirmed that firing an impulse in excitatory neurons produced a signal that matched nicely with the ones observed during regular experiments. Putting the channelrhodopsin into inhibitory neurons produced [...]

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research money well spent

by Aziz on March 11, 2007

in fMRI

news flash: emotions sometime trump rational thought! Shocking, I know. Though I was intrigued at how the fMRI paradigm in this case provides a neat empirical example for why prisoner’s dilemma models don’t translate well into real-world practice:
A classic economic example is the “ultimatum game,” in which one participant gets 10 $1 bills (or loonies, [...]

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Scientists trying to read your mind?

by Rebecca on March 5, 2007

in fMRI

Did anyone else see this article? I came across it on msnbc.com – “Scientists Try to Predict Intentions: using brain scans to read minds before thoughts turn into actions” (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17464320/)
I haven’t read anything Dr. Haynes has published in peer-reviewed journals on the topic (I’ll see what I can find) but this seems [...]

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brain scans and superbowl ads

by Aziz on February 6, 2007

in fMRI

I am sure that this experiment was initially conceived by grad students:

FKF Applied Research and the UCLA Ahmanson Lovelace Brain Mapping Center have released their Second Annual Ranking of the most effective Super Bowl ads using fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) brain imaging. Many of the Super Bowl ads stoked regions of the brain associated [...]

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