Neuroimaging Flashcards
What 3 methods can be used for brain lesion studies?
- Physical
- Pharmalogical
- Reversible (cooling or transcranial magnetic stimulation )
What are the advantages of brain lesion studies?
- Can provide information on function
- Carry out otherwise unethical studies
What are the disadvantages of brain lesion studies?
- Difficult to say how precise/specific they are
- Is the effect due to solitary contribution or an imbalance effect
What is transcranial magnetic stimulation?
- The induction of an electric current in nearby neurons using a rapidly changing magnetic field
- Can activate (e.g muscle reponses) or inhibit b
What are the advantages of TMS?
- Ability to study healthy patients with a controlled stimulation
- Inexpensive
- Excellent temporal resolution
What are the disadvantages of TMS?
- Low spatial resolution
- Possible risk of inducing epilepsy, effects on mood, local headaches
- Long term effects are not well established
What is transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS)?
Using + and - patches to induce an electron flow in the brain which can be
Cathodal - hyperpolarisation of neuronal membranes decreasing firing rate
Anodal - depolarisation of neuronal membranes increasing the firing rate
What are the advantages of tDCS?
- Inexpensive
- Allow for controlled neuromodulation
What are the disadvantages of tDCS?
- Low spatial resolution
- Cannot be used on patients with epilespy, implants or who are on medications
What are the two categories of neuroimaging techniques?
- Hemodynamic
- Electromagnetic
How does PET work?
- Ingestion of radioactively labelled material, emit positrons which are picked up
- Active brain accumulates oxygen and glucose
- Provides functional view with 45-60s integration period
What are the advantages of PET?
- Allow measurement of metabolism and blood flow
- Can use in conjunction with behaviour and pharmalogical studies
What are the disadvantages of PET?
- Expensive
- Invasive (eposure to radiation)
- Moderate spatial and poor temporal resolution
How does fMRI work?
- Uses huge magnet to induce nuclear magnetic resonance phenomenon where protons align in parallel or anti-parallel in response to strong magnetic field
- When RT is switched off measure time longitutional magnetization (T1) and transversal relaxation (T2) retun to normal
- High concentration of H has high sensitivity to NMR therefore there are differences between oxy-haemoglobin and deoxy-haemoglobin
What are the possible issues with fMRI?
- Indirect measure
- Inhibitory activity may increase or decrease energy consumption
- Susceptible to noise
- Arbitrary thresholds for significance