Home

magnetic resonance imaging

Want to boost memory in old age? Exercise, says study

Tue, 02/01/2011 - 12:52 by Jaspreet Virk

Here's one more reason to continue exercising in old age. It not only ensures fitness, but also keeps age-related memory loss at bay, states a new research.

Professor dubious about new lie detectors

Tue, 06/02/2009 - 23:44 by Shruti Sharma

Champaign, Ill -- A U.S. professor says she is unconvinced new technologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging are superior to polygraph tests for detecting lies.

University of Illinois Professor Melissa Littlefield says in today's forensically sophisticated, "CSI"-influenced world, polygraphy -- which bases its results on functions of the autonomic nervous system -- is being increasingly dismissed as dated and unreliable.

"Functional magnetic resonance imaging and Brain Fingerprinting have been hailed as the next, best technologies for lie detection …," Littlefield said.

British scientists work on mind reading

Fri, 03/13/2009 - 21:18 by Shruti Sharma

London -- Scientists at University College London are working on developing a form of mind reading using virtual reality and magnetic resonance imaging.

Their experiment, outlined in the journal Current Biology, involves looking at neural activity to determine what someone is thinking, the Financial Times reported Friday.

The scientists had volunteers navigate around a room in a computerized virtual reality game while an MRI scanner was used to examine their hippocampus, the region of the brain that is used for navigation.

"Surprisingly, just by looking at the brain data we could predict exactly where they were in the virtual reality room," said Eleanor Maguire, project leader.

The experiment is significant because it shows for the first time that memories are laid down in specific structures or patterns in the hippocampus, the newspaper says.

An advance in MRI development is reported

Thu, 02/19/2009 - 20:40 by Shruti Sharma

Zurich, Switzerland -- A Swiss doctoral student has made a discovery that medical scientists say could revolutionize magnetic resonance imaging technology.

David Brunner of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the University of Zurich said he has succeeded in exciting nuclear magnetic resonance imaging in the human body by propagating electromagnetic waves.

Brunner said he developed his theory of using propagating waves for MRI after a colleague took images of a hand and captured so-called fold-over artifacts that seemed to originate from outside the detector's field.

Brunner said that meant signals were recorded not only from the target region but also from a considerable distance -- although the detector was supposed to be sensitive only to its immediate surroundings. That, he said, is only possible if the signals travel, that is, if they propagate as waves.