At some point, every pop-neuroscience story mentions a study where [insert some part of the brain] “lights up” whenever [insert some action or thought process] happens.
The concept has given us empirical evidence that we should listen to more music, have more sex, eat more chocolate, and most other things we’d like to be told to do. These functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies make great stories. If you give a TED talk, I believe they’re legally required.
Still no place is darker than inside our heads. The images don’t actually measure brain activity; they detect blood flow. That flow makes an image light up. The approach is predicated on the idea that blood flow couples with brain activity. That leap is made, aptly, in our own brains, where we collectively assume that the areas getting a lot of blood flow are working harder.
Recent studies have called that foundational assumption to question, including a unique approach today in the Journal of Neuroscience, where a team at Columbia University's Zuckerman Institute released findings that upend the traditional fMRI model for young brains. Adult responses do not occur in newborn brains, the researchers found: Brain cells fire, but blood flow does not increase. Coupling happens later.
[For more of this story, written by James Hamblin, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/sci...a-brain-cell/487799/]
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