Neuroimaging

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is currently the best technique available to neuroscience researchers interested in mapping the neural correlates of cognition, emotion, and cases in which brain function becomes “disordered.” However, after a quarter century, neuroimaging work has made little progress in affecting how clinicians think about and perhaps more importantly treat psychiatric disorders. This lack of progress is likely the result of a limited, almost nonexistent emphasis on neuroimaging studies that focus on single individuals. Here, the progression of neuroimaging techniques from positron emission tomography (PET), fMRI, and resting-state functional connectivity MRI (RSFC) is laid out to create a sense of where the field is at currently and from where it came. Significant attention is devoted to how RSFC has become perhaps the most promising technique to evaluate brain function in single individuals and represents an analysis tool that can capture how a given treatment alters brain networks, thereby informing both the mechanism and the intervention.