The Other Mind Mapping

I caught a newscast on Calgary TV this morning (don't you love the Internet?! :O) about a research program President Obama is planning to start in the U.S. The goal will be to examine the working of the human mind. (One can only speculate whether the current budget impasse precipitated his decision.)

The newscaster noted that the same kind of research is already taking place at the University of Calgary. The school's Brain Activity Map Project is looking for possible connections between brain function and depression.

Dr. Andrea Rotzner heads a team that's hoping to help people with depression by using the tools to predict the response to different types of treatment.

“There is research out there to suggest that people who have depression actually have a network in their brain that is responsible for mood regulation that works differently than in people who don’t have depression. So you can measure their brain signal with something called functional magnetic resonance imaging or with electroencephalography and you can show differences between the brains of people who are depressed and the brains of people who are not depressed,”

Dr. Protzner says they are hoping the research will allow them to create maps of the brain that they can then use to compare others to in order to determine an appropriate treatment for them.

There are mind maps, and then there are mind maps.