Kick back and shut your eyes. Now stop thinking.
You have just put your brain into what neuroscientists call
its resting state. What the brain is doing when an individual is not focused on
the outside world has become the focus of considerable research in recent
years. One of the potential benefits of these studies could be definitive
diagnoses of mental health disorders ranging from bipolar to post-traumatic
stress disorders.
A team of psychologists and imaging scientists at Vanderbilt
has collaborated on a study that provides important corroboration of the
validity of recent research examining the relationship of functional magnetic
resonance imaging or fMRI maps of the brain’s resting state networks with it’s
underlying anatomical and neurological structure. The study is published in the
June 19 issue of the journal Neuron.