School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
Epilepsy Behav. 2013 Mar;26(3):290-4. doi: 10.1016/j.yebeh.2012.09.020. Epub 2012 Oct 22.
Functional MRI (fMRI) has transformed academic neuroscience in the last decade and is now the most widely used non-invasive functional brain imaging technique. However, it has had much less of an impact in clinical neuroscience. While a majority of fMRI applications examine brain function in response to an externally driven task, an alternative approach characterizes the brain's intrinsic functional architecture. This involves fMRI scanning in the absence of an explicit task (i.e., in the resting state) and is, therefore, much more easily performed and tolerated by neurological and neuropsychiatric patient groups. The data are easily acquired, and the functional networks extracted are reproducible and reliable. However, quantifying networks of distributed brain activity and identifying the most informative features in a particular disorder remain a challenge. Progress has been made in this direction in recent years, with the adoption of mathematical tools from communications engineering. Specific alterations to the brain's functional connectivity at rest have been observed in generalized and focal epilepsies, as well as in non-epileptic attack disorder. The challenge for the future is to exploit knowledge of how the brain works as a complex system in order to develop more accurate and sensitive diagnostic tests for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders.
功能磁共振成像（fMRI）在过去十年中改变了学术神经科学，现已成为应用最广泛的非侵入性功能性脑成像技术。然而，它在临床神经科学中的影响要小得多。尽管大多数 fMRI 应用都是研究大脑对外界驱动任务的反应功能，但另一种方法则可以描述大脑的固有功能结构。这涉及在没有明确任务（即在静息状态下）的情况下进行 fMRI 扫描，因此，对于神经和神经精神疾病患者群体来说，这种方法更容易进行和耐受。数据易于获取，提取的功能网络具有可重复性和可靠性。然而，量化分布式脑活动网络并确定特定疾病中最具信息量的特征仍然是一个挑战。近年来，随着通信工程中数学工具的采用，在这方面取得了一些进展。在全身性和局灶性癫痫以及非癫痫性发作障碍中，已经观察到大脑在静息时的功能连接存在特定的改变。未来的挑战是利用大脑作为复杂系统工作的知识，开发更准确和敏感的神经和神经精神疾病的诊断测试。
