Question

Discuss the mind-brain problem and it’s relevance to brain imaging techniques like PET scans and fMRIs in great detail.

Answer 1

Mind-brain problem:

* The mind brain problem is the problem of how to address the relation between mental phenomena and neural or physical phenomena in general is one of the most fundamental philosophical and scientific questions that psychiatry faces.

* The mind problem exits because we naturally want to include the mental life of conscious organisms in a comprehensive scientific understanding of the world.

* On the one hand it seems obvious that everything that happens in the mind depends on, or is, something that happens in the brain.

* The PET scan captures images of the activity of the brain after radioactive tracers have been absorbed into the blood stream.

* A PET scan shows how the brain and its tissues are working.

* The radioactive tracers are attached to compounds like glucose, the principal fuel of brain.

* Active areas of the brain will be utilizing glucose at a higher rate than inactive areas.

* When highlighted under a PET scanner, it allows doctors to see how the brain is working and helps them detect abnormalities like mind problem.

* Mind problem relevance to fMRIs: To non invasively investigate interactions between brain regions, neuroscience research is employing fMRI, which indirectly measures the brain activity by monitoring blood flow and blood's oxygen levels in the brain.

* fMRI used to measure brain activation utilising the dependency of the magnetic properties of haemoglobin on the amount of oxygen it carries.

* An fMRI can detect different magnetic qualities and can be uses to create a moving 3D map of the brain, highlighting which areas are involved in different neural activities.

* Greater spatial resolution allow psychologists to discriminate between different brain regions with greater accuracy.

* The images generated by fMRI scans are images of metabolic activity within these anatomic structures.