Discussing the article, "Studying mind and brain with fMRI" by Marc G. Berman, John Jonides, and Derek Evan Nee


 Cognitive neuroscientists study many aspects of the human brain; for example, the different parts, what each part specializes in, damaged areas and the effects they have, and etc… . A specific technique that is getting used more and more today to study the processes of the mind and brain is functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI. fMRI is used to test/study many things such as, localization, commonalities in brain activation, distinctiveness in brain activation, differences in individuals, and testing psychological models.
Localizing the brain functions has been a big purpose of this procedure. Researchers also studied how two different tasks both activated the same part of the brain when they were occurring. They noticed that these two tasks not only shared the commonality of activating the same area, but they both shared the same cognitive processes. Two tasks researcher Eisenberger found that were both activating the anterior cingulate and right ventral prefrontal cortex, was social exclusion and physical pain. He studied these two tasks closer and suggested that the experiences of these two concepts were similar so it would make sense that the processes were also similar. fMRI has been helping scientists locate the areas of the brain that are being activated as well as learning more about the cognitive processes of a task based on the similarity it has to an already well-known task.
Some brain activations were found different in other individuals as well. A study conducted by Canli showed many individuals facial expressions to see if the activation in their amygdala (part of the brain that triggers emotions) was consistent. Surprisingly, their amygdala activation was consistent when they viewed fearful expressions, but inconsistent when they were shown happy expressions. The researchers discovered that the individuals who were more outgoing had higher activation in their amygdala when viewing the happy expressions than the individuals who were not outgoing. This shows that our personality has an effect on our brain activation as well.
In the past twenty years, fMRI testings have flourished by discovering many different concepts with the human brain. I think fMRI testing is very helpful and needed when trying to figure out problems with damaged areas, as well as learning more about specific tasks and the specific individual. It is important to know what part of the brain certain tasks trigger and the cognitive processes of each because if someone gets into an accident and damages it, we will know what behaviors and disabilities to expect from them and hopefully find a solution to fix or make it better.
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