TheByte

BMW_Owner

Enclosed as it in the cranium, there is no easy way to observe the living brain directly. New imaging advances however, are yielding dramatic perspectives of brain function. The PET is one of the these technologies. The Pet scan relies of the transient increase of blood flow to parts of the brain during specific tasks.The scan allows us to monitor and identify which areas of the brain are active during certain tasks.

The sequences of images below show the division of the brain into different areas used independently and as a whole to allow us to preform simple and complex tasks. This study involved the patient seeing the word ca on a card, and having to speak a related verb. In this case the word was drive. The images show how the brain was able to perform this task...



As a brief summary, each of the images different areas of the brain performing a different task.

1. The word car is seen in the visual cortex

2. Wernicke area conceives of the verb drive to go with

3. Broca area compiles a motor program to speak the word drive

4. The primary motor cortex executes the program and the word is spoken

Note: the most active areas are shown in red and the least active in blue.

I hope this gives you a incite into the wonders of the brain and how it takes multiple areas of the brain to perform tasks we carry out each and every day...

Rob

Very intriguing.

The Diva

Lovely!

As a former Medical Physicist turned Cognition Science junky I encourage everyone to appreciate the complexity of a working human brain.

Keep'em coming!

BMW_Owner

Late night in the office so I thought I'd share a few more images of the mind. These are actual case studies of a young boy in the aid of neuroscience. They show the brain at work as per the same outline as my first post. The images better show the full extent of brain involvement in language task. I don't know about you but this 'stuff' fascinates me beyond comprehension.

fMRI -



Sequence shot of different controls. The Side bar shows the level of activity, measured by blood-glucose levels:

Va Va Voom

Thanks for sharing that is really quite cool

BMW_Owner

My pleasure. I have endless amounts of images and studies to post if you guys are at all interested. I don't want to clog the forum if you aren't interested, but if anyone is I'd be more than happy to post a few more interesting studies.

The Diva

Very Cool!

I was involved in a gender and cognition study not too long ago,

and yes that looks like the response of male brain!

Female brains activate several zones at the same time for language.

BMW_Owner

Yes, there does seem to be a correlation between the emotional centers of the brain and female speech. This suggests that females put more emotional thought into tasks then males do.

The Diva

Hey BMW_Owner ! fascinating stuff!

The latest consensus is that it's due to a "hardware" issue, not a "software" issue.
There are statistically significant anatomical differences considering gender and brain; consequentially, the result are different cognitive issues.

There are so many interesting papers ( and some boring) that discuss these topics!

I noticed that the images represent glucose activity levels, if you're interested also check the subject in functional EMF scan. They are very telling!