Neuroimaging: Overview of Methods and Applications

Abstract

IntroductionThe past few decades have seen enormous advances in the ability to visualize and measure aspects of brain anatomy and physiology in the living human being. The recent developments in neuroimaging techniques that provide measures of brain structure and function, as well as cerebral activity during cognitive processes such as perception, attention, and memory have changed the face of cognitive neuroscience, and have allowed us to ask questions about the relation between the brain and behavior that were simply not possible only a decade or two ago. As these techniques have become more accessible and affordable for research use, they have been increasingly applied to a variety of research questions, having the potential to greatly enhance our understanding of the normal brain and its development throughout the lifespan. Even areas of research that have traditionally not been linked to neuroscience, such as social psychology, economics, and education are increasingly making use of neuroimaging methods.From the beginning, evaluating the effects of health-related factors, such as aging, neurological and psychiatric illness, and brain injury have been an important and rapidly growing part of the neuroimaging field. Health psychology provides a potentially unique perspective in the application of neuroimaging methods studying how brainbehavior relationships are altered by disease states and other health-related factors.Neuroimaging provides a set of tools that can address a wide variety of questions. For example, researchers might address how neural systems important for specific cognitive processes are altered by the presence, progression, and treatment of a disease; test the effect of health factors such as genetic risk on regional patterns of 3 brain structure and function; identify subgroups for which treatment or prevention therapies are most effective; or determine the effect of individual differences on the expression, severity, and progression of brain diseases. To utilize these techniques effectively, however, those new to the neuroimaging field and unfamiliar with its rapidly evolving technology are often faced with the daunting task of figuring out where and how to begin.The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the major neuroimaging methods and their applications to health psychology research. Since a detailed and complete description of the methods and general applications for neuroimaging in health-related research is well beyond the scope of this chapter, we have focused on the description of methods and applications that we believe will provide a useful starting point for researchers who are thinking of applying such neuroimaging techiques to their own areas of health-related psychology.We begin with a brief review of the major structural and functional neuroimaging research methods that are commonly in use, including computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and diffusion-weight...

Gender equality in the era of digital transformation: A study on Bosnian and Herzegovinian youth

“…Of course, neither the establishment of developmental cognitive neuroscience nor the change in perspective on the adolescent brain would have been possible without the innovations and rapid updates of neuroimaging techniques in the past few decades (Insel, 2011;Vistoli et al, 2015). For example, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as an exceptionally useful tool for assessing brain function has already made a great impact on cognitive neuroscience (Ryan & Alexander, 2007).…”