Functional MRI (fMRI)

Functional MRI, developed by Seiji Ogawa and others in the early 1990s, detects blood oxygen changes linked to neural activity, enabling noninvasive observation of the living brain without surgery or radiation. It is faster than the average neuroimaging method, achieving millimeter-scale resolution in under 2 seconds per scan, and has been used in over 100,000 peer-reviewed studies. While it cannot directly measure neurotransmitters like #5 Discovery of Neurotransmitters, fMRI's real-time spatial mapping has revolutionized cognitive neuroscience by linking brain regions to functions.