Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging » (2nd Edition)

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging was the first textbook to provide a true introduction to fMRI-designed with undergraduate students, graduate students, and beginning researchers in mind.

Among the changes to the Second Edition are:

* Revised MR physics chapters that include parallel conceptual and quantitative paths, allowing students from diverse backgrounds and interests to readily navigate these topics.
* Expanded discussion of fMRI data analysis, with separate chapters on standard hypothesis-driven analyses and advanced exploratory analyses.
* Expanded coverage of experimental design that includes new approaches to efficient creation of fMRI experiments.
* Revised discussion of the physiological basis of fMRI to include recent discoveries about the origins of the BOLD response.
* A new Ethics chapter that discusses controversies, ethical and social concerns, and popular interpretations of fMRI research.
* Increased coverage of the integration of fMRI with other cognitive neuroscience techniques.
* New topics in the Advanced Methods chapter, reflecting cutting-edge developments in the field.
* Updated references and suggested readings throughout.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer:Scott A. Walker, MD, PhD(University of Colorado Health Sciences Center)
Description:This introduction to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) includes a CD-ROM with sample data sets for use with analysis software (freely available from the Web), study questions, lab exercises, and a complete glossary.
Purpose:This book is designed to accompany a course taught by the authors explaining the basics of fMRI to a broad audience of students and researchers. It emphasizes the physics and biology of fMRI without going into too great detail on any one topic. Each chapter attempts to gather together results from some of the seminal papers published in fMRI in recent years. As fMRI is such a new field, a basic textbook such as this is a very important addition to the literature.
Audience:Readers should have a least college level physics and biology background knowledge. This is an ideal book for postgraduate students or medical students who have not been introduced to fMRI. While it is somewhat at a somewhat basic level for current fMRI researchers, I agree with the author that the references at the end of each chapter are valuable even to experienced readers as a list of important papers in the field. Specialists who may be interested in this book include medical researchers, neurobiologists, radiologists, psychiatry students, physicists, and biomedical engineers (as well as many others).
Features:After introducing the concept of fMRI, the book spends the first five chapters covering the physics of magnetic resonance imaging, construction of MRI scanners, and a synopsis of different methods for generating contrast using MR pulse sequences. While this section is complete in its coverage, it lacks some depth and mathematical complexity --this could be either an advantage or a disadvantage depending on the audience. Despite the relative lack of depth in any one topic, the book does include multiple equations and formulae which, although very useful in terms of explanation, will undoubtedly intimidate some introductory readers. The section on different methods of producing MR contrast is particularly well done, with pulse sequences for each method with a well written explanation covering all the major pulse sequences used to date. Also, the authors offer simple "thought experiments" throughout the book before introducing segments which address each such experiment. This makes the book much more valuable as a teaching tool. The addition of a CD-ROM with experimental data and additional resources is innovative and particularly useful for this field of study. Since the software for analyzing this data happens to be freely available on the Web, users can analyze examples with practical software that is widely used in the field.
Assessment:This is an excellent introductory textbook. It is useful for a general audience with a minimum of background physics and neurobiology background. It covers more ground and is more complete than Functional MRI: An Introduction to Methods, Jezzard et al. (Oxford University Press, 2001), and adds up-to-date references in a fast changing field. However, this book lacks some of the depth of Jezzard's book and other fMRI texts, but this is obviously the intent of the authors. The explanations are insightful and clear. For researchers in the field, the bibliography alone makes this book a useful tool for effective research.