Headline Jan 22, 2015/ ''' *HUMANS OF THE SOUL* '''

''' *HUMANS OF THE SOUL* '''

95% OF HUMAN brain's structure is formed before the age 6.

When Bell Labs engineer discovered in 1992 that MRI could be tuned to pick the firing of the neurons   -the basic mechanism of thinking....... Brain Student, Hirsch,  appreciated the significance.

''I thought,' My God, that's going to change the course of neuroimaging forever,'' 

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN liars lie and patients feel sad?  Imaging technology can show you Head Shots.....

Teacher John had trouble concentrating on  teaching his grade-school class. Then he started having seizures. His doctors traced the trouble to a tumour in his brain's left frontal lobe.

The best option, they thought, was to remove the tumour surgically, and then  -just to make sure there were no stray cancer cells    -cut away some of the surrounding tissue.

The question, though, was how much tissue could they safely remove? No two brains are organized identically  -losing one slice of the brain might have no effect on one patient but paralyze the next.

Magnetic resonance imaging.invented at about the same time as PET, was potentially a whole lot faster, largely because it uses a different kind of physics.

In MRI, a powerful magnetic field makes some of the atoms of the brain line up like little compass needles. When you wobble the magnetic field slightly. the atoms wobble, too, giving off signals, which can-

Reveal detailed pictures of the brain's rough anatomy. But anatomy isn't the same thing as capturing thoughts in action.

The technique of functional neuroimaging has revealed a great deal in recent years about the human brain in general, but little about what patients like John, really care about : their own gray matter.

In 2003,  Joy Hirsch and her colleagues were pushing to capture the brain's activity the instant a thought occurs, and in enough detail to be able to see the tiniest of structures.

Their work is only now beginning to save surgical patients from paralysis and blindness, but there's more to come.

Like the computers in the  1960s, brain scanners those days were big, bulky and expensive  -and not really all that powerful. So, even at the time, Hirsch and her colleagues would have liked to see was the  brain-scanning equivalent of the Apple II personal computer.

In the last  10 years, though, brain scans has become a common diagnostic tool. Psychiatrists use them to analyze mental illnesses and identify potential criminals.

Police regularly uses them to determine if a suspect is lying. Will criminal witnesses be given brain scans to determine if their testimony is truthful? This is not a cynberpunk fantasy. By 2004, Hirsch's own group had figured out how spot a lying brain.

''Lying is just the same as telling the truth, except it's harder,'' she said. In certain regions of lying brain, neurons fire  more than in the brain of the truth teller. The pattern is so obvious that even an untrained eye can see it.   

Defense lawyers may find the brain scans just as attractive as prosecutors.

It is one thing to say that your client can't be held responsible for actions, it's another to point to a brain scan that shows defect in the way he controls his emotions.

Hirsch can't says whether this will come to pass:

''But in science, could we reliably people that were at risk for aggressive behaviour Yes, I believe so,'' she says.

''If we have to make decisions about therapy, that would be information that might guide us. I think of this more in terms of taking preventive action.'' 

Neuroimaging might keep people out of jail by helping them even before they commit a crime.

Hirsch knows she's moving into dangerous waters here. 

''It is omen of the future,'' she says. ''We are going to think of our qualities as humans   -our social being, our inner selves   -more in terms of our physiology.''

It will then be up to us,  not the neuroscientists, to figure out what those pretty pictures mean for our souls.

 With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' World Students' Imaging '''

'''Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless