Читать книгу The Handy Psychology Answer Book - Lisa J. Cohen - Страница 213

The technology of structural MRI (generally just referred to as MRI) preceded the technology of functional MRI (fMRI). Like fMRI, MRI technology measures magnetic properties in the brain. Instead of measuring brain function—that is, how the brain behaves—it measures brain anatomy. In very fine detail, it shows us what the physical brain looks like. Because it can see right through bones, it is able to give us a beautiful picture of brain tissue under the skull. This is extremely important when evaluating patients for brain damage, for example, after a stroke or a car accident. It can also tell us whether different groups of people differ in the anatomy of their brain, for example, whether chess players have larger parietal lobes than non-chess players (parietal lobes process spatial information). However, because people do not tend to differ that much in their brain structure in the absence of dramatic injury or disease, fMRI scans are used more frequently than MRI scans in psychological research.