To expand the applications and minimize the drawbacks, research is far from complete. They range from more powerful magnetic fields to more sensitive sensors to measuring other atomic nuclei to better visualize special structures such as cancerous tumors.
Developments in MRI procedures are also progressing steadily, not only for diagnostics, but also for causal research, surgery preparation and therapy monitoring. For example, metabolic processes such as brain activity can be measured (functional MRI = fMRI) – now even in real time.
Significance for brain research
This is a great potential for gaining new insights, especially in the current fields of brain research and neuropsychiatry, for example in diseases such as schizophrenia.
And such insights into our inner worlds may even be of interest to other fields – for example, the advertising industry hopes to gain useful information about when which brain regions react to advertising stimuli and how.
