Related Ads

Medical technology has evolved so much in recent years that today, imaging examinations can cut the body into extremely thin slices obtaining images and creating three-dimensional models of organs and tissues to discover abnormalities and diagnose disease. However, a relatively new type of procedure called functional MRI (RNF) takes the technology one step further. He not only can help diagnose diseases, but also allows physicians to enter into our thought processes to determine what we are thinking and feeling. The RNF may still be able to detect if we are speaking the truth.

Related Ads

The survey is based on the same technology as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) – a noninvasive test that uses a strong magnetic field and radio waves to create detailed images of the body. But instead, the RNF examines blood flow in the brain to detect areas of activity. These changes in flow, which are captured on a computer, help doctors better understand how the brain works.

Related Ads

The concept behind MRI has existed since the early 20th century. And in the early 30’s, Isidor Isaac Rabi, a physicist at Columbia University, experimented with the magnetic properties of atoms. He discovered that a magnetic field associated with radio waves caused the nuclei of atoms “were moving”, a property known today as MRI. In 1944, Rabi won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his pioneering work.

In the 70s, Paul Lauterbur, a chemistry professor at the State University of New York, and Peter Mansfield, a professor of physics at the University of Nottingham, England, used individually magnetic resonance imaging as the basis for the development of a new diagnostic technique called MRI. The first scanner NMR commercial was produced in 1980.

Then in the early 90’s, the physical Seiji Ogawa – who was working at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey – discovered while conducting animal studies that hemoglobin was low in oxygen (the molecule in blood that carry oxygen) was affected by a magnetic field differently hemoglobin oxygen-rich. Physicist realized he could use these contrasts in the amount of oxygen in the blood to map images of brain activity in a normal examination of NMR.

The basic idea behind the discovery of Ogawa was proposed more than half a century earlier by chemist Linus Pauling. In the 30th, Pauling found that the reaction of oxygen-rich blood and deoxygenated blood to the strength of a magnetic field was different by 20%. In the RNM, the location of these differences enables scientists to determine the parts of the brain that are being irrigated by blood and so are most active.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Share and Enjoy:
  • Print this article!
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google Bookmarks

Related posts