IUBio

fMRI - availablity/utility

Lawrence Foard entropy at world.std.com
Tue Oct 26 01:49:44 EST 1993


In article <CFGx04.F9E at umassd.edu>,  <rleary at UMASSD.EDU> wrote:
>
>  
>Is functional/fast MRI yet available as a diagnostic tool as is
>a CAT scan? If one (or one's physician) wanted to have some fMRI studies/
>images done on a patient, could this be arranged without great difficulty?
>What about cost and waiting time? (I'm thinking about the Boston/New 
>England area but would also be interested if services were available elsewhere 
>- - e.g., Mayo Clinic, etc.) 

Atleast in Long Island the clinics I've worked in are not in use much
of the time. With the exception of paper work you could probably get
same day appointments, I think they also reserve some emergency slots.

>   Particularly interested in power of this technique/technology to reveal/
>indicate physical brain damage that previous techniques might not have been 
>unable to detect (in this regard I'd also like to know if "plain" MRI or 
>PET scanning is significantly more powerful/revealing than other predecessor 
>imaging techniques such as CAT scanning?

I have the impression that MRI would be better than CAT scan for this
purpose, but you'd probably want to ask a radioligist (sp?).

>   Also - has physical evidence of brain damage attributable to drug abuse - 
>cocaine, LSD, amphetamines, etc. - ever been demonstrated using imaging 
>techniques? I remember seeing something (was it in the book Awakenings? - [the 
>author of which - the celebrated Dr. Sacks - got knocked in the context of 
>a review of another neuroscience book in Sunday's NY Times book review section])
>about a group of young people who literally blew their minds with some designer 
>drug - and I believe there were pictures/images showing this type of damage 
>in a real human brain.

Let me guess you got hired to make anti drug ad's? Well maybe not if you
where you wouldn't bother with real experments, fake ones work just as well
and you don't have to deal with politically "invalid" results...

-- 
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