Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, by Scott A. Huettel,
Allen W. Song and Gregory McCarthy. 2004. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer
Associates, Inc. 492 pp., $79.95.
Imaging the human brain at work was revolutionized by the discovery of
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in the early 1990s. Prior to
this, functional brain mapping was limited to a handful of medical centers
capable of conducting positron emission tomography (PET) scans of regional
cerebral blood flow. With the discovery of the endogenous blood oxygen
level dependent (BOLD) contrast method in 1992, fMRI
“democratized” the field by expanding the number of medical
centers capable of functional brain imaging. Today, over a thousand
peer-reviewed fMRI articles are published each year, many in high profile
scientific journals that receive additional attention by the popular
press. This explosion of scientific research is relatively easy to
understand: fMRI can be conducted on the majority of the 6,600 MRI
scanners installed in the US alone, the technique is completely
noninvasive since it does not require injection of MRI contrast agents or
radiopharmaceuticals, and, as an added benefit, fMRI provides a unique
combination of high spatial and temporal resolution. Not surprisingly,
fMRI is the imaging technique of choice for mapping cognitive and
emotional systems in the healthy brain. More recently, fMRI has been
applied to clinical populations to identify the brain mechanisms governing
recovery of function from stroke and head trauma, detect early brain
changes in neurodegenerative conditions, and measure the effects of
psychoactive medications on neurodevelopmental disorders, as examples.
fMRI provides a complementary method for testing neuropsychological models
of brain function derived from other methods (lesion,
electrophysiology).