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Signals from Spinning Nuclei |
Human brain imaging with functional magnetic resonance is among the most recent developments in a field that came into existence barely 20 years ago. Today, scientists use fMRI to follow changes in brain activity as stroke patients start to regain lost abilities, with the aim of developing better strategies for treatment and therapy. They use fMRI to investigate the developing neural networks for language, hearing, vision, and motor systems in an infant listening to her mother's voice. They can also try to understand the subtle abnormalities in brain activation of children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, as well as the memory difficulties of patients suffering from schizophrenia.
The underlying phenomenon that makes all this possible is known as nuclear magnetic resonance, and the path to its discovery started with early investigations into the nature of the atom. Although the idea of the atom dates to the ancient Greeks, gaining objective knowledge of it--and of its constituent parts--has come about in just the last hundred years or so. In 1897, physicist J. J. Thomson at Cambridge University in England discovered the electron followed by Ernest Rutherford's discovery of the atomic nucleus. Over the next few decades, a number of brilliant theoretical physicists--including Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrodinger, and Werner Heisenberg--built on one another's work to advance our understanding of the structure and properties of the atom and atomic particles. In so doing, they revolutionized physics, producing a new language and theory known as quantum mechanics. |
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 | | | Neuroscience for Kids - This site from the University of Washington offers simple explanations of some of the different kinds of imaging. |  | | Physics 2000 - This site from the Univeristy of Colorado's Physics Department is great. You can go here if you want to get an overview of physics concepts, or look at a model of the atom. | | | SpectroscopyNOW.com: MRI - This site includes several resources for information on MRI. | | | The Laboratory of Functional MRI - This site of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center gives you more information on the continuing research on fMRI. | | | Visible Human Project - The National Library of Medicine's Visible Human Project includes a set of MRI scans. |  |
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