The warmer colors - reds and yellows - correspond to brain regions with higher activity the cooler ones - blues and greens - are brain areas with less activity. The colors correspond to brain activity (if we allow a few technical assumptions that need not trouble us here). The images are reconstructed horizontal slices through the brain the front of the brain is at the top, as if the person was lying on his or her back. The top row of brains here is from an individual without any diagnosis the bottom row is from a patient with OCD. These PET scans produce images of the brain, like this (From Baxter et al, 1987): They used PET imaging to measure brain activity (actually brain metabolism and blood flow, but t hose are thought to correlate pretty closely with activity). The earliest work was from UCLA in the 1980s, by Baxter and colleagues. OCD was one of the first psychiatric disorders in brain scans showed evidence of abnormal brain activity in specific regions.
Is my brain normal? Would a brain scan help with my diagnosis? With my treatment? Recently, several people with OCD have written to me to ask: "Should I get a brain scan?" It's not an uncommon question.
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