ABSTRACT
The first functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of a human being were obtained on a clinical MRI scanner.1 This is not surprising as, at the time, virtually every MRI machine into which a human could fit was in clinical practice, reaping the benefits of the previous decade of rapid development of imaging technology. Belliveau’s groundbreaking observation of visual cortex activation was performed using bolus injections of an MRI contrast agent, but subsequent studies quickly adopted Ogawa’s technique2 of measuring the endogenous effects of deoxygenated hemoglobin. In the years that have followed, blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI has become a pervasive method in the normative study of the human brain. In contrast to the rapidity with which BOLD fMRI has transformed cognitive neuroscience, clinical applications have come more slowly. As the chapters in this book attest, however, the time is now ripe to reap the benefits of clinical fMRI.
