functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)

Topic description and stories

Opinion: Brain scanners allow scientists to ‘read minds’ – could they now enable a ‘Big Brother’ future?

13 Feb 2017

Brain imaging can reveal a great deal about who we are and what is going inside our heads. But how far can – and should – this research take us...

Differences in brain structure and memory suggest adolescents may not ‘grow out of’ ADHD

27 Aug 2015

Young adults diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adolescence show differences in brain structure and perform poorly in...

Brain areas with rich blood supply lower their vascular reactivity with ageing

Your brain might not be as ‘old’ as you think

09 Mar 2015

Our standard way of measuring brain activity could be giving us a misleading picture of how our brains age, argues Dr Kamen Tsvetanov from the...

Brain activity in sex addiction mirrors that of drug addiction

11 Jul 2014

Pornography triggers brain activity in people with compulsive sexual behaviour – known commonly as sex addiction – similar to that triggered by drugs...

This scan depicts patterns of the vegetative patient's electrical activity over the head when they attended to the designated words, and when they when they were distracted by novel but irrelevant words, Credit: Clinical Neurosciences

Patient in ‘vegetative state’ not just aware, but paying attention

31 Oct 2013

Research raises possibility of devices in the future to help some patients in a vegetative state interact with the outside world.

Looking into the brain

04 Jan 2011

The Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre is a unique venture that brings together scientists and doctors from Cambridge University and Cambridge’s...

Obsessive compulsive disorder linked to brain activity

16 Jul 2008

Cambridge researchers have discovered that measuring activity in a region of the brain could help to identify people at risk of developing obsessive...

Why are we so fat?

01 Apr 2007

For some people, the urge to eat is uncontrollable. Cambridge scientists have taken us a step closer to understanding the causes of obesity by...

The psychology of gambling