Functional Magnetic Resonance Image Machine

Words: 354
Pages: 2

A functional magnetic resonance image machine, also known as an fMRI is a large machine that has a huge magnet. The machine takes pictures of slices of the brain that show how much activity is going on in the brain. The doctors can see the activity by looking at the brightness of the images. Dr. Nancy Kanwisher says that neurons are like muscles, so if part of your brain turns on it is like using a muscle, we need to send more blood to supply those neurons. The fMRI picks up the magnetic signature of the oxygenated hemoglobin. To get the image with the fMRI they take a series of two dimensional pictures of the brain. What the fMRI is measuring is the speed at which the oxygenated hemoglobin return to their original position.

In this video