Personal Injury Law

Growing Pains for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

By Bruce Stern

I recently read a very interesting article in the June 13, 2008 issue of Science published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).  The article is entitled “Growing Pains for FMRI.”

Of interest to neuro-attorneys was a small article outlining a recent psychological study that was performed by Dr. David McCabe of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado and Dr. Alan Castel of UCLA.  In the study, 156 undergraduate students were asked to evaluate several mock news articles describing brain injury studies.  The research described was “bogus.”  In the study, students saw one of three versions of each article: (1) the text alone; (2) the text plus an FMRI image depicting activity in part of the brain; or (3) the text plus a bar chart summarizing the FMRI result.  According to the article, those who saw the brain image rated the scientific reasoning in the article as more compelling then did the others even though the images themselves added no relevant information.  The study itself was reported in the April issue of Cognition People.

The lesson for neuro-attorneys is that it is important when presenting information or a physician’s interpretation of a diagnostic test to have the jury observe the actual film or study. 

Full post as published by Traumatic Brain Injury Law Blog on July 09, 2008 (boomark / email).