Fmri

Graphic: G Douaud, University of Oxford.

Geneticists Are Untangling the Mystery of Left-Handedness

A series of genetic variants can influence handedness, according to a new paper. No, researchers have not discovered a “handedness gene.” But through brain imaging of 9,000 people in the United Kingdom, researchers devised a list of genetic variations that contribute to the way different brain processes end up on either side of the brain.…

Biology Ryan F. Mandelbaum Sep 4

Why Booze Makes You Mean

Dramatic mood shifts while drinking alcohol are normal, but for some of us, booze takes us down a path toward nasty, belligerent, and downright aggressive behavior. By studying brain scans of drunk men, Australian scientists have pinpointed the parts of our brain that go weak when we drink, making us meaner than usual. But like…

Health George Dvorsky Feb 13

Artificial Intelligence Detects Suicidal Tendencies in People Using Brain Scans

Recent scientific progress has allowed us to begin decoding the significance of many different patterns of activity in the brain. Researchers have begun to understand patterns associated with disorders such as depression, in hopes of correcting it. Other research has zeroed in on how language and speech is signaled in the brain. In one often-cited…

Health Kristen V. Brown Oct 31

That Viral Story of an ‘Awakened’ Vegetative Patient Serves as a Cautionary Tale

Medicine is perfect for heartwarming stories. Some close relative is facing the most hopeless prognosis, such as being in a vegetative state. Someone tries a wild treatment, and boom, people are crying, the relative is awake, and the headlines go viral. But science doesn’t really work this way. A man recently “woke” from a vegetative…

Tech News Ryan F. Mandelbaum Oct 27

Scientists Have Been Using a Flawed Method to Diagnose Pain

For many years, neuroscientists believed they had identified a specific pattern of brain activity acting as a kind of “signature” for pain in the brain. Recently this so-called “pain matrix” has been called into question, and a new study by British researchers may have shattered the myth once and for all. The pain matrix is…

Tech News Jennifer Ouellette Apr 25

This Documentary Uses Science to See Who Loves the Hardest

Six adults (and one kid), one fMRI machine, five minutes to love someone (or something) as hard as possible. In The Love Competition, a short documentary first featured in McSweeney’s Wholphin #15, filmmaker Brent Hoff and Stanford University neuroscientists try to see which type of love makes the brain most active. Contestants — including a…

Tech News Diane Kelly Jun 19

Why We Need a Right to Privacy for Brain Data

There’s still no technology in the world that lets you listen in on someone’s thoughts. But fMRI advances are making it easier than ever to measure, interpret, and even reconstruct brain activity, and a growing market of wearables with electroencephalographic (EEG) components and brain-computer interfaces means that there are more ways to map our brainwaves…

Privacy & Security Kate Knibbs Feb 23

xkcd Explains Why Brain Scans Can Be Misleading

So much of neuroscience is now based entirely on fMRI studies. But as Randall Munroe’s latest webcomic points out, brain scans are not without their limitations. Indeed, as important and illuminating as fMRI studies are, they often don’t tell the whole story. More on this here, here, and here.

io9 George Dvorsky Nov 28

How Many Tasks Can Our Brains Process At The Same Time?

The human brain has been described as a massively parallel computing machine. But just how powerful is it? A recent brain scan analysis is offering some unexpected results. Image: DiffusionMRI glyphs (a process similar to fMRI). Each of the brain’s voxel values is represented by an ellipsoid. (CC) Neuroscientist Harris Georgiou from the National Kapodistrian…

io9 George Dvorsky Nov 10

Scientists Used a Hitchcock Thriller to Measure Patients’ Consciousness

Alfred Hitchcock, our master of suspense, was incredibly good at manipulating his audience—a fact that has now come in handy for neuroscientists. When they screened a Hitchcock thriller for volunteers in a brain scanner, they found that brain activity of a man who has been in a vegetative state for 16 years was astonishingly similar…

Movies Sarah Zhang Sep 15

Scientists Can Reconstruct Faces by Reading Your Mind

Fantasizing about an old flame? Lusting over a celebrity instead of your current squeeze? Watch out: scientists can reconstruct the faces you’re thinking about from a brain scan alone. Researchers from Yale have been using functional MRI scans to reconstruct the images of people’s face from subjects that are thinking about a particular person. Showing…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe Mar 28

Brain Scans Reveal When Your Decisions Are Getting Risky

For the first time, scientists have shown that they can predict when people will make risky decisions based on brain activity patterns. Could this lead to a world where we consult brain scans to predict whether we’re making a risky choice or not? Our lives revolve around choices, where we must sometimes choose between a…

io9 Joseph Bennington-Castro Feb 6

Comment of the Day: Science of Fear Edition

In today’s comments we speculated on which of our favorite on-screen characters were just one step away from a pink slip, chose the super powers we would most like to have in our arsenal of fun, and (just in time for Halloween!) unlocked some secrets of what the brain does with fear. Today, Joy Hirsch,…

io9 Ria Misra Oct 29

Why do we feel the pain of bad guys more than the good guys?

Whether it be in movies or real life, we don’t tend to feel sorry for the villains. But strangely, and even a bit disturbingly, we often empathize more with the pain they experience. A new study offers a potential answer to this puzzling phenomenon — and it may have something to do with wanting to…

io9 George Dvorsky Oct 17

Scientists say they’ve found the neural origin of humans’ “sixth sense”

Answer as fast as you can: how many cats are in the image up top? Did you answer without counting them individually? Probably not – but if you were pushing yourself, there’s a good chance you tallied them in groups of three or four. Now, researchers say they’ve identified a small tangle of neurons that…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Sep 9

New brain scan predicts criminal activity before it happens

Neuroscientists have identified a brain scan that enables them to predict whether convicted felons are likely to land themselves back in jail after they’ve been released. But have they discovered the “repeat offense area” of the brain? Far from it. Nature News’ Regina Nuzzo summarizes the researchers’ findings (emphasis in bold): Kent Kiehl, a neuroscientist…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Mar 26

Brain Scans Can Now Reveal Who You’re Thinking About

For the first time, scientists have been able to use data from brain scans to identify who patients are thinking about. Researchers from Cornell University have been analyzing data from functional MRI scans in an attempt to reconstruct what memories people are recalling. But now they’ve gone a step further, by trying to deduce the…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe Mar 15

Here’s the Exact Part of Your Brain That Thinks About Sex (And Cars, And Baseball…)

If you’ve ever wondered which part of your brain thinks about a particular object, activity or concept, worry no longer—this interactive brain is about to answer all your questions. This online app lets your peer into a wealth of fMRI data, which has been organized to show information about how thousands of objects and actions…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe Dec 20

This is a tree. It’s also a brain.

Feast your eyes on a Maple Brain — a cerebellar sculpture (adapted from and inspired by actual fMRI scans) hewn from the stump of a maple tree. Apparently the sculptor (who, judging from his website, probably goes by “Bachy”?) “can produce figured wooden brains customized to reflect your abilities, research interests or particular features of…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Nov 15

Man in coma uses his thoughts to tell doctors, ‘I’m not in pain’

Back in 2010, neuroscientists confirmed that it was possible to communicate with some patients locked in a vegetative state by using an fMRI scanner. Though limited, the breakthrough suggested that more meaningful dialogue with patients in a coma could someday be possible. And now, two years later, it has finally happened. A Canadian man in…

io9 George Dvorsky Nov 13

Fmri

Geneticists Are Untangling the Mystery of Left-Handedness

Why Booze Makes You Mean

Artificial Intelligence Detects Suicidal Tendencies in People Using Brain Scans

That Viral Story of an ‘Awakened’ Vegetative Patient Serves as a Cautionary Tale

Scientists Have Been Using a Flawed Method to Diagnose Pain

This Documentary Uses Science to See Who Loves the Hardest

Why We Need a Right to Privacy for Brain Data

xkcd Explains Why Brain Scans Can Be Misleading

How Many Tasks Can Our Brains Process At The Same Time?

Scientists Used a Hitchcock Thriller to Measure Patients’ Consciousness

Scientists Can Reconstruct Faces by Reading Your Mind

Brain Scans Reveal When Your Decisions Are Getting Risky

Comment of the Day: Science of Fear Edition

Why do we feel the pain of bad guys more than the good guys?

Scientists say they’ve found the neural origin of humans’ “sixth sense”

New brain scan predicts criminal activity before it happens

Brain Scans Can Now Reveal Who You’re Thinking About

Here’s the Exact Part of Your Brain That Thinks About Sex (And Cars, And Baseball…)

This is a tree. It’s also a brain.

Man in coma uses his thoughts to tell doctors, ‘I’m not in pain’

Amazon Is Sticking With ‘Rings of Power’ to the End

Trump Is Reportedly Going Full Steam Ahead with the Golden Dome

‘Kamen Rider’ Is Ready to Take on the World

Twitter Just Can’t Stop Leaking Movies

The ‘Mass Effect’ Show is Getting Rewritten to Get Greenlit

See the Early Stages of How ‘Project Hail Mary’ Brought Rocky to Life

‘Cognitive Surrender’ Is a New and Useful Term for How AI Melts Brains

HP Omen Max 45L Review: 4K60 Gaming Has Never Been So Easy

Ecovacs Winbot W3 Omni Review: Window Cleaning Robots Have a Long Way to Go

AirPods Max 2 vs. Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd Gen): Which ANC Headphones Win?

The Best Gadgets of March 2026

AirPods Max 2 Review: Still Ridiculously Expensive and Ridiculously Nice

DJI Osmo 360 Review: The Best 360 Camera for the DJI-Pilled

Aqara Smart Lock U400 Review: Hands-free Unlocking at Its Best

MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ Review: A Solid 2-in-1 Laptop With Some Glaring Flaws

Sonos Play Review: Call It a Comeback

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