All articles tagged with #fmri
A seven-Tesla fMRI study shows that time perception is not a single clock but a three-stage cortical process: early visual areas encode physical durations, parietal and premotor regions map durations across a topographic layout, and frontal regions translate this into a subjective boundary, revealing a distributed, hierarchical network for how the brain experiences the passage of time.
A multinational reanalysis of 11 datasets (267 participants, 519 brain scans) across five psychedelics—psilocybin, LSD, mescaline, DMT and ayahuasca—identified a shared neural fingerprint: increased cross-network communication and selective reductions within certain networks across cortical and subcortical regions, suggesting a flattening of the brain's hierarchy. The pattern was most similar for psilocybin and LSD. While promising for understanding psychedelics and potential therapies, the study emphasizes the need for standardized, larger trials and notes that existing datasets used varied methods and doses.
Researchers publish the first lifespan atlas of brain functional connectivity, using fMRI data from about 3,600 people aged from infancy to 100 years to chart how brain networks reorganize from sensory processing to higher‑order cognition and relate to cognitive performance in young adults.
A large-scale lifespan study maps three core functional gradients—sensory–association (SA), visual–somatosensory (VS), and modulation–representation (MR)—across birth to 100 years, showing early anchoring to primary sensory systems, differentiation along association and control axes through development, and later dedifferentiation with aging; these gradients relate to cognitive performance, structure–function coupling, and transcriptomic patterns, providing a normative lifespan atlas for brain organization.
New fMRI study shows chronic back pain heightens the brain’s response to ordinary sounds, with stronger activity in the auditory cortex and insula and less regulation by the medial prefrontal cortex; 142 patients vs 51 controls reacted more intensely than 84% of controls. A randomized trial found Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) best reduced this sensory amplification and normalized brain activity, supporting the idea that chronic pain is a whole-brain issue that can be treated with brain-based therapies.
A study of 148 children aged 4–9 found that exposure to threat (abuse, witnessing domestic violence) is linked to greater insula activation when processing a caregiver’s cue, suggesting trauma makes caregiver signals more salient and engages interoceptive processing. Deprivation showed no similar effect, indicating adversities affect brain circuitry in distinct ways. The study used a multimodal fMRI task comparing caregivers to strangers and highlighted cross-sectional limits and the need to explore attachment and long-term mental health outcomes.
New precision MRI work across 800+ participants reveals four cerebellar regions involved in language, including a right-posterior area that acts as a dedicated language satellite mirroring the neocortical language network. Most cerebellar regions also activate during non-linguistic tasks, suggesting the cerebellum helps integrate information across brain networks. The findings extend the language network into the cerebellum, with potential implications for language learning and aphasia therapy through non-invasive brain stimulation.
A German neuroimaging study found that individuals with higher polygenic risk scores for anhedonia show distinct brain activity during a monetary incentive delay task: they exhibit decreased activation in the bilateral putamen and left middle frontal gyrus during reward anticipation and reduced right caudate activity during reward feedback. Higher risk is also associated with lower activity in the left middle frontal gyrus when anticipating losses and during salience processing, while there is heightened activity in the bilateral putamen and right caudate during loss feedback. The results highlight the involvement of striatal and prefrontal circuits in genetic risk for anhedonia, though replication and further research are needed.
A neuroimaging study of drug-naïve adolescent girls with borderline personality disorder found reduced activation in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and other regions during self-reflection compared with healthy controls, suggesting diminished cognitive control over identity processing; results hint that some social-cognition networks may be preserved, but generalizability is limited by the small, female-only sample and study design, underscoring the need for replication and longitudinal work.
A study with 40 participants using fMRI finds substantial overlap in brain regions activated during episodic and semantic memory retrieval, challenging the view that these are distinct memory systems and suggesting the whole brain participates in both types; findings could influence dementia research and interventions.
Recent research reveals that fMRI signals often misrepresent actual neural activity, with about 40% of cases showing increased signals where neural activity is reduced, due to regions extracting more oxygen without increased blood flow. This challenges long-standing assumptions in brain imaging and suggests a need for direct energy consumption measurements to better understand brain function and disorders.
Recent research indicates that up to 40% of fMRI signals may not accurately reflect actual brain activity, highlighting significant issues with signal interpretation, noise, and the reliability of fMRI as a tool for understanding neural processes.
A study using fMRI scans of people watching an Alfred Hitchcock show suggests that as we age, our brains experience fewer and longer-lasting neural states, which may contribute to the perception that time passes more quickly in older adults. This neural dedifferentiation could make it harder to distinguish between events, influencing our subjective experience of time.
A study using fMRI and machine learning shows that different people's brains process and represent colours in a very similar way, suggesting a universal neural basis for colour perception.
Scientists used EEG and fMRI scans to study 'mind blanking,' a brief state where conscious thought stops, revealing that during this state, brain activity slows down and shows hyperconnectivity similar to deep sleep, possibly serving as a brain reset mechanism.