The brain is such a complex thing in which most people would like to know the full understanding of it. Why is it that the brain is so small, yet has so many functions? How do people view what is actually going on in our brains? What kind of activity goes on in the brain when we are feeling a certain type of way? What medical instrument do you use in order to check your brain? So many of these questions are asked, but they are also answered. To begin with it, to look at your organs, in this case the brain, you would take what is called an MRI or Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
Gives you an image of how your brain looks like using radio frequency pulses to make up the image of your brain. If you want a detailed image of your brain, then you would take a fMRI or Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. It would give a finer detailed image in which you may not be able to see on an MRI such as blood oxygen levels in your brain, and your brain activity. So while you feel a certain way, the oxygen levels and the activity in your brain will act differently when you are feeling happy, sad, angry, depressed and so much more. It is apparent that it is obviously not the same for each individual since we express our emotions differently.
The same way a person is different on the outside, on the outside the way our brain functions is completely different, so there is no exact way to see how the emotion of happiness may show up in an MRI or fMRI, but you could probably identify what a person may be feeling. While reading over chapter 17 in the book Why Icebergs Float: Exploring Science In Everyday Life by Andrew Morris he talks about how the brain functions under the view of a MRI. It is very interesting how he mentions how the brain functions, with all of our motor activity making it clear to actually understand what he is saying while having no background knowledge of the medical field.
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Reading this book reminded me of the psychology book Psychology: An Exploration Upper Saddle River by Ciccarelli White. Ciccarelli mentions, “fMRI has been used to demonstrate that older adults with a genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease show greater activation in brain areas associated with semantic knowledge and word retrieval when compared to older adults without that genetic risk” (71). While most have a genetic risk for Alzheimer’s, those without it have a different brain activity when they are aging.
In the book by Morris he mentions, “Older people today are encouraged to remain mentally active” (173). It’s funny how Ciccarelli explains that those who have a genetic risk for Alzheimer’s have high brain activity than normal older adults, while Morris encourages that older adults should improve their memory. In a way, they both authors explain to help the generation of older adults because maybe scientists may distinguish how an older person brain may function trying to increase brain activity comparing to someone who has a genetic risk for Alzheimer’s.
Morris on page 179 explains how a brain may function in the view of an MRI under certain circumstances such as feeling embarrassed, guilty, or even deceit. It’s interesting how experiments were conducted to test these emotions and to distinguish each one of them by viewing the activity of the brain. Feeling embarrassed would have to do with your “conceptual social knowledge” which would be your social actions. Meaning that possibly something is happening on the outside that you’ve done or seen that is making you embarrassed. For the feeling of guilt, tends to affect the “moral transgression” meaning the morals that yourself as a human have.
We all have beliefs about what is right and wrong in our eyes so whatever you are doing wrong, you know what you’ve done is wrong and you regret or feel guilty about it. And while most people do not think about deceit, could possibly be something almost every human being does. What’s interesting is that if you know the answer to something but want to deceit someone, then the brain will do so. It kinda makes you think if you are controlling it or if the brain is actually deceiving you.
An experiment has been done with the topic of deceit and Morris explains, “Experiments have been conducted using functional MRI with actors lifting up a box. People watching videos of this action judges whether or not the actors were trying to deceive them about the real weight of the box […]. The conclusion was that this might suggest that being deceived evokes an emotional form of response” (180).
While doing the research on this topic, I found it highly interesting the topic of the brain. I chose this topic because of how important and beautiful how the brain functions under the view of an MRI of fMRI. I find this quite beneficial if you happen to look at an MRI of the brain to detect how a person is feeling. And depending on how they are feeling it can be a cause of their genetics or how the environment might have influenced him/her.
Just behind an image of the brain, you can find out so many things about an individual, and their life story whether it be the good part or bad part. This will benefit from people who may be wanting to work more as a Radiologist, Doctor or a Nurse. Knowing these kinds of things will surely help you improve your knowledge of the brain, and to identify the patient you might have in your care.
