BIOL 1080 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Positron Emission Tomography, Radioactive Tracer
18 Nov 2017
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Document Summary
Railway accident, iron rod goes through his skull, survives, left frontal lobe destroyed. Early evidence that different areas of the brain are networked to create our personality. The brain is segregated, yet networked in a way to make it responsible for creating emergent properties such as: personality rational decision making the processing of emotion. Reading, vision, speaking ect. use multiple sections in the brain, ex. not just frontal lobe. Positron emission tomography (pet): tracks glucose uptake (glucose tracer) Inject radioactive tracer, can track where it goes in the brain. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fmri): tracks blood flow (deoxyhemoglobin is paramagnetic) When hemoglobin loses oxygen, person is put in big magnet, deoxyhemoglobin responds, can trace where its going. Higher metabolic rate is where the hemoglobin is losing its oxygen. It has become apparent with the above techniques that areas of activity (function) do not always precisely coincide with defined anatomical zones. Networks are identified by neurons using the same neurotransmitter.
