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Yes! Recent work using fMRI has shown that subjects can indeed control localized brain regions through practice [1]. Some regions that have been tested include the rostal ACC [2] responsible for pain perception, PPA responsible for representing locations, and FFA responsible for representing faces. Repeated experiments seem to suggest the phenomenon is ...

The MTL consists of (note that some structures overlap): cortical areas, which can be categorized in at least three ways: portions of two gyri entire parahippocampal gyrus anterior medial side of fusiform gyrus five named cortical areas: perirhinal cortex parahippocampal cortex (see parahippocampal gyrus) entorhinal cortex presubiculum* parasubiculum* ...

It is not widely thought that impaired function or destruction of the fusiform is sufficient to produce prosoganosia. It is currently widely held that face processing involves a network of regions in the occipital and temporal lobes (e.g., the occipital face area, posterior superior temporal sulus, anterior superior temporal sulus, anterior collateral ...

A minor addition to Jeff: There are ongoing researchs on controlling brain's response (e.g amygdala) to negative situations and using this techniques for psychiatric interventions (e.g. for anxiety disorders, depression). [1] There are different possibilities for learning adaptive coping strategies with simple, stuctured biofeedback training setups. But ...

Yes and no. Source estimation has been utilized in electrical engineering for decades, but is becoming more and more prevalent in the EEG realm, especially in light of efforts to register EEG readings with concurrent fMRI studies. Basically, given a set of EEG (or even MEG, magnetoencephalographic) measurements, can we "invert" them to find the individual ...

This is a complicated and loaded question. As Neuroskeptic noted, our understanding of consciousness is very poor (in fact, we don't know how to define it most of the time). To see some of the best current definitions, take a look at: What are current neuronal explanations and models of 'consciousness'? We definitely can't infer arbitrary properties of ...

There is no better way to describe brain activity than brain waves! :) There are newer ways to analyze and think about brain waves, though. Usually you will find these under literature on neuronal oscillations. Good aspects of thinking about brain activity using brain waves: Brain waves are directly related to neural activity. They are an electric or ...

Not only can brain activation be controlled though consciousness (which is expected under most reductionist accounts of the mind-brain problem) and measured in the lab (as @Jeff's answer showed) but it can actually be used as an interface! Erik Ramsey is locked-in syndrome patient and is incapable of movement apart from his eyes. However, he has control of ...

The easiest way to get an fMRI (and many other brain) scan is to volunteer to be a participant at your local university, hospital, or research center. They will let you keep a picture of your brain, provide some interesting information at de-briefing, and usually even give a bit of monetary compensation for your time. Since the research group has to have an ...

Yes, though not necessarily in the way that you are meaning - some prosopagnosics will have damage to the area in question, so you could say the activity is lower because there is not much left of it! Quick google reveals this paper: http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/20/8/1878.abstract It's recent so will probably review the evidence you are ...

Have you tried: connectomeviewer http://www.connectomeviewer.org/viewer brainnetviewer http://www.nitrc.org/projects/bnv/ which is a toolbox for the SPM software package http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/ Gephi http://gephi.org/ Trackvis http://trackvis.org/ Also Nico Dosenbach has some amazing picture of brain connectivity in this paper ...

Resonance methods can be used to measure neurotransmitter levels. Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy can measure the levels of a large number of neurotransmitters. However, this has always been viewed as a fairly static measure of neurotransmitter levels, and so has not been widely used as a measure of neural activity. However, Paul Mullins at Bangor University ...

I found an example of a system that researchers are aiming to use in the future for determining the level of neurotransmitter activity in the brain using MRI. You were on the right track with the utility of hemoglobin. The molecule used is somewhat similar. To understand how the probes were generated requires a bit of a biological detour. There are ...

It's a bit of an art, currently. Following is one technique I witnessed in a lab that takes electrophysiological recordings of tadpole and rat neurvous sytems. The lab that I worked with entrains the neuron, recording it's electrical activity (in a series of drug tests) and injects a marker that goes into the neuron (a GFP-like protein that binds to ...

It's unclear whether follow-up tests were ever performed on Lorber's patients, and in particular the student referenced by Lewin. Patient confidentiality precludes a systematic search of the literature, particularly because the Lewin (1980) article does not provide a pseudonym with which we can use to track the patient (e.g. "HM"). It is possible that this ...

This question gets close to something that might alternatively be posted to stats.stackoverflow.com. Personally, I've always felt that application of Null-Hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST) methods to neuroimaging data does a particularly good job of highlighting their scientific deficiencies. Personally, these days I'd use Generalized Additive ...

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned spiking activity. The spatial and temporal resolutions are phenomenal. The technology to record action potentials simultaneously from many neurons over many cortical areas is growing. Much of theoretical neuroscience deals with how those patterns of spiking convey information. As with the other answers, I will add ...

Great question! To start, you are absolutely right-- a 1997 article on fMRI is considered very old as far as the field is concerned. Statistical techniques have improved dramatically since then so, while I haven't read the article in question, it's safe to assume that there are probably lots of things they would do differently if the study was conducted ...

I'm not an expert in neuroimaging, so I had to search a little bit to learn about how carry-over designs apply to fMRI (I found Aguirre, 2007). Thus, feel free to correct me if there is something specific about this problem domain that influences the correct answer to this question. However, based on general principles of experimental design of repeated ...

Answering to my own question: Avogadro is a molecule editor, but for visualization purposes it does not check the validity of the molecule, thus permitting its usage in the creation of publication-quality 3D ball-and-stick models of any subject matter, such as brain connectivity networks. Avogadro reads several molecule file formats, for example .cml is an ...