Real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been shown to be useful in the detection of brain activity via the relatively indirect coupling of neural activity to cerebral blood flow and subsequently to magnetic resonance signal intensity. Recent technical advances have made possible the continuous collection of successive images at a rate rapid compared with such signal changes and in the statistical processing of these image time series to produce tomographic maps of brain activity in real time, with updates of 10 frames/s or better. We describe here our preferred method of real-time functional MRI and some of the early results we have obtained with its use.