Life / Neuroscience & Psychology

Functional MRI

MRI can show which brain regions become active during thought, without surgery or radiation.

Seiji Ogawa found in 1990 that blood-oxygen levels change MRI signals, and teams recorded the first human brain-activation images in 1991-92. fMRI let researchers watch the thinking brain in healthy people and led to thousands of studies on vision, memory, emotion and decision-making. Its timing is slow and indirect, and statistical pitfalls have caused controversies.