Looking Inside the Brain

Denis Le Bihan is internationally recognized for his contributions to the development of imaging methods for the study of the human brain. He is the founding director of NeuroSpin, an institute of the French Atomic Energy Commission dedicated to ultra-high-field brain imaging. He won the 2012 Honda Prize, Japan's international award for science and technology, and the 2014 Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine.

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1Elementary Particles 4
Broca's Discoveries 5
The Birth of Modern Neuroimaging 7
The First Revolution: The X-Ray
CT Scanner 8
Nuclear Magnetism 11
The Nuclei Enter into Resonance: From NMR to MRI 13
The Anatomy of an MRI Scanner 16
The Crystal Skull 18
2The Magnetic Brain 22
The Computer at Work 22
The Brain's GPS 24
When the Brain Is Constructed 25
The Destiny of Neurons 28
Language and Cerebral Plasticity 30
Genes or Environment? 33
The Phrenology of the Brain 35
3Seeing the Brain Think 38
I Think, Therefore I Irrigate 38
Seeing the Brain with Antimatter! 39
The Glory of PET 41
Positrons on the Verge of Being Replaced by Magnetism 42
Electrons Come to the Aid of Protons 43
The Wrong Track 45
A Question of Oxygen 46
From Rats to Cats . . . Then to Humans 47
The Prowess of Functional MRI 48
Don't Think of Anything 50
Proof through Statistics 51
The Homunculus Seen in fMRI 52
The Traps of fMRI 53
The Missing "L" 54
4The Magnetic Brain in Action 56
A Cat in the Brain 57
Mental Reading 59
"When Things Are Bad, Look at Yourself in a Mirror" 62
Singing in the Brain 64
What Side Do You Speak On? 67
An Expensive Lie Detector 71
The Intimate Brain 73
Does Free Will Exist? 76
At the Doors of Awareness 78
5The Brain Probed through Water Molecules 82
Einstein's Visions 84
NMR Sensitive to Diffusion 86
From NMR to MRI: Diffusion . . . Confusion 87
Diffusion and Cancer 90
Mike's Other Discovery 93
White Matter Takes On Colors 95
An Asynchronous Brain 99
6Water: Molecule of the Mind? 104
The Firefighters Arrive a Bit Late 104
Swelling Neurons 106
Two Types of Water 109
104.5 Degrees: The Angle of Life 111
Protons Play Leapfrog 114
The Tribulations of Water in Cells 115
A Dance of Spines 118
Mechanical Neurons 121
7The Crystal Brain 125
Enter the Nanoparticles 126
Many Are Called, Few Are Chosen 129
MRI of the Extreme 133
An Exceptional Instrument for an Exceptional Organ 137
The Birth of NeuroSpin 141
Safety Above All 143
Conquering the Brain 147
In Search of a Neural Code? 150
References 153
Figure Credits 161
Index 163