PSYC 4140 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Diffusion Mri, Tachycardia

• School: University of Georgia
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 4140
• Professor: Brian Haas

Document Summary

Good: good for descriptive, but not predictive measures we cannot assume causation using fmri. Bad: people try to use it to assume that one region of the brain is connect to one function in your brain. Levels of oxygen in the brain: neurons use a lot of oxygen, so determining where a lot of oxygen was just used, can let us predict which neurons were active. Fmri does not actually show us neuron activity because it does not measure action potentials. This can lead to a large delay; up to 6 seconds after the neurons have actually fired. Example: we are interested in which part of the brain is in charge of understanding emotions. Experiment idea: show emotional faces and ask people to determine which emotion they"re showing; then show a blank screen and collect data again with fmri. Conclusion: the part of the brain that lights up is in charge of processing emotions (this is a flawed experiment)