fMRI is a medical device used to map brain activity by detecting the deoxygenation of hemoglobin in active neural areas. Patients must remove metal objects before entering the machine, and those with pacemakers are advised not to go near it. Despite criticism, fMRI has been successfully used for years to diagnose brain problems and study brain activity in psychology.
FMRI is a device used by doctors or other medical personnel to map brain activity. It stands for functional MRI. The f at the beginning of fMRI is not capitalized except at the beginning of a sentence.
An fMRI machine is a large, bed-sized medical piece of equipment that generates high magnetic fields. For this reason, people with pacemakers are advised not to go near fMRI machines. Patients must remove metal objects before entering the machine. To enter the machine, a patient lies down on a stretcher-like horizontal platform that slides into a cylindrical cavity. The patient is magnetically scanned from all sides and a real-time image is created, which is submitted to the doctors for further analysis.
An fMRI machine works using the principle of magnetic resonance imaging. The practice was formerly known as magnetic resonance tomography (MRT) or nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR).
MRI works as follows. It has been known for over 100 years that blood flows to certain areas of the brain when these areas are active. This is because active neurons consume more blood than inactive neurons. Red blood cells carry a substance called hemoglobin throughout the body, including active neurons. When a neuron is active, it consumes more oxygen, which it receives in the form of hemoglobin.
Hemoglobin is an “oxygen storage molecule” capable of releasing and absorbing oxygen multiple times. Red blood cells contain a large amount of hemoglobin, which is oxygenated with air from the lungs, then deoxygenated when the cells receive oxygen. Oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin have different magnetic properties.
Oxygenated hemoglobin is diamagnetic, meaning that it slightly repels a magnetic field. Deoxygenated hemoglobin is paramagnetic, which means that applying an external magnetic field causes it to become slightly magnetic. Both effects are small, but measurable.
The deoxygenation of hemoglobin in active neural areas is what the fMRI machine detects. This occurs several seconds after the neural activity itself. FMRI machines have been criticized as a scientific tool for a variety of reasons, including that some theories of fMRI interpretation are unfalsifiable, and that different parts of the brain can consume more or less oxygen even though they are at about the same level. of activity. Regardless, fMRI has been used successfully for years to diagnose various brain problems. It has also been used in psychology to study which tasks activate which areas of the brain.
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