Neuroimaging Technology: How Do They Look Inside Your Brain? (The Science Behind Nootropics)
Where does the knowledge behind brain science & brain supplements come from?
With the constant developments surrounding brain supplements and neuroscience, some might wonder where people actually derive all this amazing knowledge from.
Through new neuroimaging techniques we can now open windows into the brain that give us the opportunity to expose the neural mechanisms responsible for our actions and perception, allowing us to create improved brain supplements and optimize our brain.
But what are these neuroimaging techniques all about? Names such as Positron Emission Tomography (PET), functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) or Electroencephalography (EEG) often appeal to our imagination.
Whereas classifying every neuroimaging technique as some futuristic brain machine that allows us to look inside our heads is definitely convenient and quite true to a certain extent, having some deeper knowledge about neuroimaging techniques allows for a better understanding, which is very useful when trying to make sense of most of the current topics in brain science.
Even though neuroimaging techniques are incredibly complex, the general workings and functional concepts are overall easy to comprehend.
Neuronal weather systems
One common used tool is PET (Positron Emission Tomography), which maps your brain activity by highlighting each brain area’s concentration of its most important chemical fuel; glucose. Active neurons burn glucose likea F1 car burns gasoline.
By giving a person radio-active labeled glucose, a PET scan can detect where this ‘thought food’ ends up by locating the radio-active glucose. Just as a weather system show rain activity, a PET scan shows brain activity by exposing the active spots where the brain areas are most active as a person performs cognitive tasks, solves problems and recognizes objects and faces.
Brain science & supplements: thanks for quantum physics
Another neuroscientists’ favorite scientific tool is MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), which requires your head to be held in a strong magnetic field (which looks like a huge donut), causing it to align the spinning atoms of your brain molecules.
A radio-wave pulse then shortly disorients the atoms. When the atoms return to their usual spin, they emit a signal that establishes a detailed picture of the brain’s tissues.
The workings of this technology, using quantum-physical principles sounds pretty amazing and MRI definitely is one of the prime examples of humanities amazing potential regarding technology.
Through the use of MRI, many discoveries have been made, including the fact that the left brain hemisphere of musicians who have perfect pitch has a larger neural area than the average left hemisphere. It has also been shown that some schizophrenia patients have enlarged fluid-filled brain areas.
MRI has a special application, commonly known as fMRI (functional MRI), which can not only reveal the brain’s structure, but also its functioning. Blood goes to the brain are that is especially active. By taking MRI scans less than a second apart and comparing them, researchers can observe the brain ‘lightening up’, as the blood flow increases while a person performs various cognitive tasks.
For example, when you’re watching a visual scene, the fMRI machine would detect blood flowing to the back of your brain, where the visual cortex lies that is responsible for our visual processing. Analyzing such snapshots of the brain’s activity offers insights into how the brain divides its workload.
Brainwashing supplemented brain science
Another technique on the neuroimaging shortlist is Electroencephalography (EEG). The well-known image of a head connected to a great amount of electrodes is indeed what an EEG looks like.
However, instead of being used as an alien brainwashing device, it is used in a scientific context to measure the electrical activity along the scalp by the firing of action potentials by neurons in the brain.
When neurons are active, they fire a signal through the ‘depolarization’ of their membrane. This depolarization creates a small difference in electric potential, which can be measured by the EEG’s ultra-sensitive instruments.
This also makes it possible to measure the frequency of brain waves related to various physiological and psychological conditions.
The golden age
Learning about neuroscience now is like exploring the world in Columbus’ age. Without the continuous development of the techniques illustrated above, we would not be able to learn more about how we make sense of the world, develop new and improved brain supplements, and optimize our brain.
As famous neuroscientist Erik Kandel stated: this is the golden age of neuroscience!
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