Posted by noa on February 24, 2002, at 15:40:11
In reply to Re: Brain scans: PET and fMRI oldschool, posted by tammy on February 21, 2002, at 22:43:19
Of course, I would love to get a functional scan and find out what is going on inside this brain-o-mine, but I'm afraid that the research is still so new as to be not very useful on the clinical level. I don't think there have been enough scans (accessibility and cost limits the numbers) to develop norms yet, so right now, I think the scans are as yet only useful to researchers in that one can make reasonable comparisons of groups (and the groups they study are still small, I think, so you have to add that to the mix of the power of the research as of yet), but not to be able to scan an individual and be able to say if the individual's functional scan is significantly different from the norm.
So I'll wait. Maybe later in my lifetime the technology will get to that point. Hopefully, the pharmocological technology will be able to make use of future imaging knowledge, too, so that meds will be less dirty, more targeted.
poster:noa
thread:94933
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020222/msgs/95327.html