Brain function

Brain 

We argue that location and timing of brain activity on the scales that fMRI allows is informative and useful information for both understanding the brain and clinical practice. One just has to take a more in depth view of the literature and growth fMRI over the past 30 years to appreciate the impact it has had. His cynicism that most fMRI users are misguided appears to dismiss the flawed yet powerful process of peer review. His specific criticisms of fMRI are incorrect as they bring up legitimate challenges but completely fail to appreciate how the field has dealt – and continues to effectively deal with them. These two criticisms also fail to acknowledge that limits in interpreting the measurements are inherent to all other brain assessment techniques – imaging or otherwise. Lastly, his highlighting of a single researcher and study in this issue of Brain is myopic as he appears to imply that these are the extreme exceptions – inferred from his earlier statements – rather than simply examples of a high fraction of outstanding fMRI papers. He mentions the value of hypothesis driven studies without appreciating the vast literature of hypothesis driven fMRI studies nor acknowledging the power of discovery science. Functional MRI is a tool and not a catalyst for categorically mediocre science. How it is used is determined by the skill of the researcher. The literature is filled with examples of how fMRI has been used with inspiring skill and insight to penetrate fundamental questions of brain organization and reveal subtle, meaningful, and actionable differences between clinical populations and individuals. Functional MRI is advancing in sophistication at a very rapid rate, allowing us to better ask fundamental questions about the brain, more deeply interpret its data, as well as to advance its clinical utility. Any argument that an entire modality should be categorically dismissed in any manner is troubling and should in principle be strongly rebuffed.



Dr. Kullmann seems to equate brain mapping itself with flawed and non-hypothesis driven research: “Showing that activation patterns or functional connectivity motifs differ significantly is, on its own, insufficient justification to occupy space in Brain.” There is no need to argue the utility of brain mapping, as the thousands of outstanding papers in the literature speak for themselves. One just has to attend the Organization for Human Brain Mapping or Society for Neuroscience meetings to appreciate the traction that has been made by fMRI in generating insight into brain organization of healthy and clinical subjects.



Back in 1991, the first fMRI signal changes were observed, ushering in a new era in human brain imaging that has reaped the benefits from its relatively high resolution, sensitive, fast, whole brain, and non-invasive assessment of brain activation at the systems level. With layer and columnar resolution fMRI currently producing promising results, it is starting to approach circuits level. Functional MRI has filled a large temporal/spatial gap in our ability to non-invasively map human brain activity. The appeal of fMRI has cut across disciplines – physics, engineering, physiology, psychology, statistics, computer science, and neuroscience to name a few, as the contrast needs to be better understood, the processing methods need to be developed, the pulse sequences need to be refined, the reliability needs to be improved, and ultimately the applications need to be realized. Neuroscientists and clinicians have applied fMRI to a wide range of questions regarding the functional organization and physiology of the brain and how they vary across clinical populations.



In summary, we argue that location and timing of brain activity on the scales that fMRI allows is useful for both understanding the brain and aiding clinical practice. One just has to take a more in-depth view of the literature and growth of fMRI over the past 30 years to appreciate the impact it has had. His implication that most fMRI users are misguided appears to dismiss the flawed yet powerful process of peer review in deciding in the long run what the most fruitful research methods are. His specific criticisms of fMRI are incorrect as they bring up legitimate challenges but completely fail to appreciate how the field has dealt – and continues to effectively deal with them. These two criticisms also fail to acknowledge that limits in interpreting any measurements are common to all other brain assessment techniques – imaging or otherwise. Lastly, his highlighting of a single researcher and study in this issue of Brain is myopic as he appears to imply that these are the extreme exceptions – inferred from his earlier statements – rather than simply examples of a high fraction of outstanding fMRI papers. He mentions the value of hypothesis driven studies without appreciating the growing literature of discovery science studies.