Decoding the Emotional Brain

Recommended QUEST Resources

• Reporter's Notes: Decoding the Emotional Brain

  Being a neurologist in the era of fMRI scanners must feel like being a kid in a candy shop. What's going in there while we're, say, shopping? How about reading? Watching campaign ads? Now that we have a way to take real-time images of the brain at work, the scientific possibilities are endless.
  
  Read more of reporter Amy Standen's post on the QUEST Science Blog.

• Watching the Brain at Work: MRIs and Beyond

  The human brain was once a black box, but scientists are finding ways to peer inside and explore some of our most complicated thought processes. Using MRI scanners in innovative ways, Stanford scientists are learning how children's brains process words when they read.

• Web Extra: Emotions from the Inside and Out

  Meet Matt Chaney. He's been diagnosed with pseudobulbar affect, a neurological condition which shows up in about one of three people with ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. The result? Uncontrollable fits of laughter and crying that strike as often as three or four times a day. Watch Matt's episodes from the outside, and from within an fMRI machine, as scientists try to figure out how emotions play out in the human brain.

Additional Links

• Pseudobulbar Affect Background Information

  Read a paper by Howard Rosen, a neurologist at University of California San Francisco, on Pseudobulbar Affect.

• ALS Association

  Matt Chaney, like others with Pseudobulbar Affect, suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or "Lou Gehrig's" disease. Since his diagnosis, Chaney has raised about half a million dollars for the ALS Association.