China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Questioning the Validity of Mystical States: Opinions and Objections
Published in Andrew C. Papanicolaou, A Scientific Assessment of the Validity of Mystical Experiences, 2021
The variability in the identified patterns should not come as a surprise. This form of research involving functional neuroimaging is still developing and many factors that have not been identified yet exert their influence on the results. At this point, announcements to the contrary notwithstanding, the pattern of brain activity that corresponds to the mystical state has not been identified. But undoubtedly, sooner or later, it will. And, when it does, we will know what areas form the particular network the activity of which corresponds to the mystical state. We will most likely also find what neurotransmitters are used in the creation of that activity pattern and will then understand better the role of the psychedelics in its creation.
Neuroimaging in the Evaluation of Neurogenic Bladder Dysfunction
Published in Jacques Corcos, Gilles Karsenty, Thomas Kessler, David Ginsberg, Essentials of the Adult Neurogenic Bladder, 2020
However, despite these achievements, the use of neuroimaging in the evaluation of neurogenic bladder dysfunction is still in its infancy, and there are still many lessons to be learned. Results often originate from rather small group sizes (n < 20) and are presented on low significance levels (e.g., p ≤ 0.05 uncorrected). There is a large heterogeneity of applied methodology/protocols, analysis, and outcome reporting that hamper a reasonable comparison of studies. Study conclusions often remain vague and do not progress to the level of explaining the meaning of the findings in the pathophysiologic context of the investigated LUTD. Currently, functional neuroimaging is a pure research tool without clear or significant clinical implications, which is also due to the fact that results are not conclusive on a single subject level. Due to the rather limited reliability of BOLD-MRI and the large number of confounding factors, evaluation of treatment effects should be interpreted with great caution.
Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation
Published in Hans O Lüders, Deep Brain Stimulation and Epilepsy, 2020
Gregor Thut, Alvaro Pascual-Leone
In such online applications, the higher the frequency and intensity of rTMS are, the greater is the disruption of the directly targeted brain region, and hence the greater is the behavioral effect. Online rTMS can then be used in the preoperative evaluation of specific brain areas. During pre-surgical planning, it is sometimes necessary, in order to minimize the risk of post-surgical deficits, to identify the language dominant hemisphere, localize the language areas, or localize the motor area that might have been shifted due to compression by intracranial or intracerebral lesions. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), for example, might be helpful in this regard. However, it is important to realize that functional neuroimaging can only provide insight into the brain areas associated with a given behavior, failing to establish a causal relation between brain activity and behavior. In order to bridge the gap between correlation and causality, it is necessary to disrupt the activity and assess the behavioral consequences. Functional neuroimaging cannot tell the neurosurgeon that lesioning a given brain region, whether it shows task-related activation on fMRI or not, will cause a post-surgical deficit. The combination of fMRI with TMS can potentially provide such insight.
Substrates of speech treatment-induced neuroplasticity in adults and children with motor speech disorders: A systematic scoping review of neuroimaging evidence
Published in International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 2021
Brooke-Mai Whelan, Deborah Theodoros, Katie L. Mcmahon, David Copland, Danielle Aldridge, Jessica Campbell
Neuroimaging technologies enable the visualisation and analysis of brain structure and function, and may provide a potential means of illustrating neuroplasticity mechanisms underpinning intervention-induced improvements in speech function. Structural neuroimaging techniques (e.g. magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)) involve methods for visualising the anatomical properties of the brain, such as cortical thickness, volumetric changes, and white matter integrity. Functional neuroimaging techniques (e.g. functional MRI and positron emission tomography (PET)) highlight brain areas and processes that are active during specific behavioural tasks (Hirsch, Bauer, & Merabet, 2015). Within the context of improved speech performance, it is hypothesised that neuroimaging data may provide an adjunct measure of treatment effectiveness regarding the structural and functional responsivity of the brain to an intervention.
Hippocampal volume, function, and related molecular activity in anorexia nervosa: A scoping review
Published in Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology, 2020
Johanna Keeler, Olivia Patsalos, Sandrine Thuret, Stefan Ehrlich, Kate Tchanturia, Hubertus Himmerich, Janet Treasure
Twelve studies used functional neuroimaging methodology to examine neural activation in AN during various tasks, all following a cross-sectional design. Eleven of these studies used fMRI methodology and one used SPECT methodology. Six studies used an a priori ROI approach [80–85], with the remaining studies using a whole-brain approach (N = 6). Sample sizes of participants with active AN in most of these studies were small (ranging from 6 to 18) limiting statistical power, with the exception of one resting-state fMRI study which utilized a sample size of 74 [83]. The majority of studies aimed to examine neural activation during processing of visual food stimuli (N = 7), with one examining responses during an emotional conflict task, one looking at cognitive flexibility, two using resting state fMRI, and one examining cerebral perfusion in AN. Two fMRI studies [84,85] used the same data as a previously published paper [81], examining the role of various molecular factors such as oxytocin and cortisol. As such, these studies will be discussed in the subsequent section examining molecular findings and the remaining studies will be appraised here (N = 10). See Table 3 for an overview of all included functional neuroimaging studies.
Control of false positive rates in clusterwise fMRI inferences
Published in Journal of Applied Statistics, 2019
Functional neuroimaging is a collection of technologies to measure neuronal activities as an aspect of brain function [40]. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and its antecedents, positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetoencephalography/electroencephalography (M/EEG), are widely used methods, which take blood flow as an indirect measure of brain activity [38]. After the first map of blood flow in an animal brain was produced by Ogawa et al. [43] more than 25 years ago, fMRI has become a popular technique that some 40,000 research papers utilized for understanding the human brain [13,55,67] and localizing psychological functions to brain regions [5,33,66]. It is also an important tool in diagnosing and treating brain disease or injury, such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, autism, etc. [8,35,65].