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The same is true for people infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Scientists also
speculate that children born to active meth users might suffer higher rates of cognitive and
behavioral disorders. A joint research effort by Linda Chang and Thomas Ernst at the University
of Hawai‘i’s John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) and The Queen’s Medical Center in
Honolulu has started to make crucial inroads into deciphering the root causes of these problems,
using novel adaptations of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetic
resonance spectroscopy (MRS).
Standard magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans only capture the structure (i.e., the shape or
size) of the brain. In contrast, fMRI goes a step further by using advanced imaging techniques to
detect brain function or brain activity in real time. MRS techniques can ascertain not just the
presence and location of certain metabolically active chemicals, but also the concentration of
these chemicals. With a grant from the White House Office for National Drug Control Policy and
other research grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Chang, Ernst and a team of
physicists and neuroscientists are adding crucial capabilities to these powerful new MRI
technologies.
Despite decades of intensive research directed at decoding the inner workings of the human
brain, this most vital organ has remained an enigma. Scientists in recent decades have learned the
basic physical functions of the different parts of the brain and gained an understanding of some
of the most rudimentary biochemical mechanisms that control this complex mass of nerve cells.
But no convenient mechanism existed to study the living brain in detail. Brain chemistry changes
at death, so cadaver studies were mainly useful for physical insights. Invasive techniques, such
as electrode implantation, were both expensive and dangerous, not to mention totally
unacceptable for healthy people required as a control group for any scientific study. As non-
invasive techniques that are highly accurate and easily repeated, fMRI and MRS both offer
opportunities to examine the living brains of large groups of subjects over long periods of time,
with little impact on their well-being and at a low cost.