What is it?
Ultrasounds are often used and remembered for their use to see babies within the womb while they are still alive. This is important because there are some imaging technologies that cannot be done in vivo and must be done with a motionless specimen. Now, functional ultrasounds are being used to look into the brain of primates. These studies by Alexandre Dizeux and his team were able to see local changes in the blood volume within the brain during cognitive tasks with enough resolution to measure the propagation - amount or change in - of signals.
Why does it matter?
Understanding how the brain works has been one of the biggest dilemmas in science and modern medicine. It is a complex system of electrical signals, blood flow, cellular networks, and more. Functional ultrasound allows cerebral hemodynamics to be measured at high resolution in large areas of the brain. We can now see how different areas of the brain are stimulated through blood flow, rather than just the electrical impulse, as well as see the propagation of these signals. This way scientists can better understand the operating system of the human body and can thus treat medical ailments of the nervous system better. The more we know about what happens and which areas of the brain are used for different tasks, the better treatment we can offer.
Read more at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09349-w
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