Neural Imaging May Help Predict Future Behavior

 Neuroscience  

Noninvasive brain scans have led to basic science discoveries about the human brain, but they've had only limited impacts on people's day-to-day lives. A number of recent studies showing that brain imaging can help predict an individual's future learning, criminality, health-related behaviors, and response to drug or behavioral treatments.

Noninvasive brain scans, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI), have led to basic science discoveries about the human brain, but they've had only limited impacts on people's day-to-day lives. A review article published in the journal Neuron, however, highlights a number of recent studies showing that brain imaging can help predict an individual's future learning, criminality, health-related behaviors, and response to drug or behavioral treatments. The technology may offer opportunities to personalize educational and clinical practices.

"We often wait for failure, in school or in mental health, to prompt attempts to help, but by then a lot of harm has occurred. If we can use neuroimaging to identify individuals at high risk for future failure, we may be able to help those individuals avoid such failure altogether."

Dr. John Gabrieli of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues describe the predictive power of brain imaging across a variety of different future behaviors, including infants' later performance in reading, students' later performance in math, criminals' likelihood of becoming repeat offenders, adolescents' future drug and alcohol use, and addicts' likelihood of relapse.

"Presently, we often wait for failure, in school or in mental health, to prompt attempts to help, but by then a lot of harm has occurred," says Dr. Gabrieli. "If we can use neuroimaging to identify individuals at high risk for future failure, we may be able to help those individuals avoid such failure altogether."

Prior to treatment, patients with social anxiety disorder who exhibited greater posterior activation (left) for angry relative to neutral facial expressions had a better clinical response to cognitive behavioral therapy than patients who exhibited lesser activation (right)

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In particular, Gabrieli focuses on education as he believes brain imaging might help teachers identify those kids who will struggle when learning to read or do math. “Current behavioral testing is pretty good at identifying which children are at potential risk, but it’s still too hit-and-miss to trigger serious help (about half of children who look to be at potential risk turn out not to be at true risk),” he told Medical Daily. “Also, I can imagine that more knowledge from brain-informed outcomes might lead to new kinds of behavioral testing that could be more readily used in schools.”

The study authors also point to the clear ethical and societal issues that are raised by studies attempting to predict individuals' behavior. "Because of their biological nature, brain measures can be overly valued and potentially divert public and scientific interest in behavioral and social factors," they write.

"We will need to make sure that knowledge of future behavior is used to personalize educational and medical practices, and not be used to limit support for individuals at higher risk of failure," says Dr. Gabrieli. "For example, rather than simply identifying individuals to be more or less likely to succeed in a program of education, such information could be used to promote differentiated education for those less likely to succeed with the standard education program."

SOURCE  Cell Press via EurekAlert

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