Control of Brain Activity

Technology Review: Emerging Technologies and their Impact: "Until a few years ago, selective control of brain activity was just a provocative idea. But a new version of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has, for the first time, made brain activity visible in real time. The technology was just what deCharms needed. He and his collaborator Sean Mackey, associate director of the Pain Management Division at Stanford University, have already shown that their technique works, at least in the short term. In December, they published the results of their first study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showing that both healthy subjects and chronic-pain patients could learn to control brain activity -- and pain -- using real-time fMRI."