BIO SCI 38 Lecture Notes - Lecture 23: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Pulse Oximetry, Supercooling
10 Jan 2020
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Document Summary
Detects electrical changes associated with cortical activity. Used frequently in testing for sleep disorders. Also used in learning and memory studies. Much less expensive than other methods and hardware is relatively affordable o only useful for detecting changes on cortical surface. The instrument is keep a magnetically shielded vault and requires a supercooling system to increase detector sensitivity. Uses squids (superconducting quantum interference devices) to detect miniscule changes in magnetic fields due to changes in dendritic currents. Picture at right the array of squids inside the meg scanner. Temporal resolution is excellent detects real time changes in electrical potentials on brain surface. Spatial resolution is modest and works best for areas closest to the cortical. Imaging structure of the living brain: magnetic resonance imaging (mri) surface. A very strong magnet aligns protons in the body. Coils send radio waves that knock these protons out of alignment.
