Nt1310 Unit 2 Reaction Paper

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According to Russell Poldrack’s article, what fMRI can tell us is often overrated despite its powerful impact on the study of the human brain. fMRI is a useful technique that allows us to image brain activities by measuring blood flow in the brain. It expanded our understanding of mental disorders from a biological perspective and helped us understand structures and functions of the brain. However, there are several limitations on what neuroimaging can tell us because it is difficult to determine how our brain works or how we can diagnose and treat mental disorders from them.
Research using fMRI is based on seeing which part of the brain is activated in certain conditions. Findings from this research showed strong evidence of associations between mental disorders and the brain by comparing regions that function and look differently between …show more content…

They also showed changes in structure and function in the brains over time, such as brain development. In terms of diagnosis and treatment, neuroimaging widened our view on diagnostic categories of mental disorders and prospective treatments that can be specialized for individuals from their brain images.
However, these findings are not the complete answer for the effects of mental disorders on brains due to the limitations of neuroimaging. Most importantly, brain images do not provide information on causality. They do not show the whole physiological process of what is happening in our brains and other parts of the body. Thus, we cannot draw any causational conclusion from them. In addition, we cannot tell how the degree of activation affects brain function and whether it is proportional to the strength of emotion or performance. For example, strong activation in the amygdala does not mean that a person is extremely fearful. Moreover, findings from fMRI may not be replicable. This highlights the fact that more research needs

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