Functional fMRI image of a pre-teen brain while they are doing a working memory task

Visualizing Brain Function

Now why would someone throw paint all over a perfectly good human brain?  The good news is that this isn’t a paint splattered brain, but the colors are meaningful. This is a functional magnetic resonance image (fMRI) of a pre-teen's brain. The different colors denote the parts of the brain that are most active during particular tasks.

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Functional fMRI image of a pre-teen brain while they are doing a working memory task

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Visualizing Brain Function

Now why would someone throw paint all over a perfectly good human brain?  The good news is that this isn’t a paint splattered brain, but the colors are meaningful. This is a functional magnetic resonance image (fMRI) of a pre-teen's brain. The different colors denote the parts of the brain that are most active during particular tasks.

What am I looking at?

Here we see an fMRI image of the brain of a pre-teen performing a task that involves working memory. This is the type of memory involved in tasks such as learning a list of items and then recalling if a specific item was on the list. The colors correspond to brain activity. Red and yellow areas (1) are the most active while blue and green areas (2) are less active.

Biology in the Background

You have probably heard of an MRI as a diagnostic tool in medicine, but this technique is also very powerful in a research setting. MRIs allow doctors and researchers to see the interior structures of the body, including the brain, with stunning detail.

A specific type of MRI called a functional MRI allows researchers to visualize the activity of different areas of the brain by detecting changes in blood flow and the amount of oxygen present at the time of the scan. Therefore, they can see which parts of the brain are most active while a person does a task or thinks about something specific. This type of information is invaluable when treating brain injury or disease and in understanding the role of different brain regions.

A pre-teen human brain weighs a little less than 1300 grams (3 pounds). On average, the adult human brain measures about 140 x 167 x 93 mm (5.5 x 6.5 x 3.6 inches) but is slightly smaller in a pre-teen, about 95% of the volume of an adult brain.

Technique

This image was created using functional magnetic resonance imaging.  

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Contributor(s)

Richard Watts, University of Vermont and Fair Neuroimaging Lab