How mature are you? Have you ever wanted to find out, with a 5 minute brain scan? Of course you have. And now you can, thanks to a new Science paper, Prediction of Individual Brain Maturity Using fMRI.This is another clever application of the support vector machine (SVM) method, which I've written about previously, most recently regarding "the brain scan to diagnose autism". An SVM is a machine l
9 Vote(s)
September 12, 2010
You're (Brain Is) So Immature
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August 16, 2010
Is Your Brain Autistic?
There's been a lot of buzz and some scepticism about theNew brain scan to diagnose autismHere's a quick overview. Autism is believed to be a disorder of brain development. If so, it should be possible to diagnose it based on a brain scan. Unfortunately, it's not. You can't tell, from a scan, whether someone has autism or not. Not even if you're a world expert.There are reports of various differen
7 Vote(s)
7 Vote(s)
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August 12, 2010
What do people with chronic pain & health anxiety worry about?
While there is a whole heap of research going on in the area of chronic pain, something that seems to be missing at times is the experience of the person who has the pain. When I take a look through a journal I can see loads of articles with fabulous treatments and awesome brain scan … Read more... Tang, N., Salkovskis, P., Hodges, A., Soong, E., Hanna, M., & Hester, J. (2
17 Vote(s)
17 Vote(s)
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July 7, 2010
Tripping into an artificial experiment
The NeuroKüz blog covers a new study in which research participants were asked to take the hallucinogenic drug psilocybin before being asked to take part in a pretend brain scan in a fake fMRI machine.If the situation seems a little odd, a bit trippy even, it's actually more common than you think as almost all functioning brain scanning centres now have fake brain scanners that are used to test o
16 Vote(s)
16 Vote(s)
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July 1, 2010
Best tests for predicting Alzheimer’s disease identified
New research has identified the memory and brain scan tests that appear to predict best whether a person with cognitive problems might develop Alzheimer's disease.
10 Vote(s)
10 Vote(s)
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February 26, 2010
Area responsible for neuroscience errors located
I liked this funny and recursive brain diagram from tech journalist Quinn Norton that makes fun of our tendency to be wowed by brain scans.The diagram has a good evidence base. A 2008 study found that adding a picture of a brain scan to a scientific argument about human nature made the general public more likely to be believe it even if brain activity wasn't relevant to the point being made.Anoth
7 Vote(s)
7 Vote(s)
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January 25, 2010
Brain scan diagnoses misunderstanding of diagnosis
There have been a lot of media stories in the past week about a study from the US military supposedly showing that a new form of brain scan can diagnose post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in army veterans. Although interesting, the study doesn't show any such thing and this is an example of a common misconception that regularly appears as a form of 'new biological test diagnoses mental disorde
6 Vote(s)
6 Vote(s)
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January 5, 2010
Touch Of Fire
The pictures are the interesting results of an MRI scan on a 15-year-old boy who had his hair in 'twists' that were held in place with beeswax coloured black with iron oxide.The iron oxide is magnetic and it interfered with the scanners' magnetic field causing the rather lovely aura effect on the images.This is not the only case of a hair style interfering with a brain scan in the medical literat
13 Vote(s)
13 Vote(s)
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November 30, 2009
Brain scan study shows cocaine abusers can control cravings
A new brain-imaging study shows that active cocaine abusers can suppress drug craving, suggesting new ways to help them quit and avoid relapse.
9 Vote(s)
9 Vote(s)
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October 29, 2009
Tracked with pain
Today's Nature has an excellent piece about an increasing and currently not well-researched trend for fMRI brain scan 'neurofeedback' treatments, where the patient is shown a visual representation of the activity of a certain brain area in the hope of learning to control it.In this case, the big idea is that a patient with chronic pain is shown real-time activity in their anterior cingulate corte
11 Vote(s)
11 Vote(s)
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