Brief Report Neuro-imaging in Mental Health

Abstract

Functional neuro-imaging has developed as a powerful tool in cognitive neuroscience and, in recent years, has seen widespread application of it in psychiatry. Although such studies have produced evidence of abnormal patterns of brain response in association with some pathological conditions, the core pathophysiologies remain unresolved. Although imaging techniques provide an unprecedented opportunity for investigation of physiological function of living human brain, there are fundamental questions and assumptions which remain to be addressed. We consider the difficulties that accompany the most frequent application of these techniques- an attempt to identify responses of the brain to changing tasks or contexts- and explore how these responses are affected by psychiatric illness. These are critical issues. If these cannot be addressed, functional imaging approaches must confine their ultimate aims to diagnosis and accept that they will never clarify etiology. If the following questions remain unanswered, no matter how complex their technical advances are, the techniques will inevitably produce ambiguous findings. The questions are (1) Has the psychiatric disorder under study been appropriately specified? (2) Has the chosen task enabled a clear and unambiguous manipulation of the psychological processes that we wish to study? (3) How may we interpret changes in brain activations in the patient group?