• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.348-358
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to investigate brain activation pattern and functional connectivity network during experimental design on the biological phenomena. Twenty six right-handed healthy science teachers volunteered to be in the present study. To investigate participants' brain activities during the tasks, 3.0T fMRI system with the block experimental-design was used to measure BOLD signals of their brain and SPM2 software package was applied to analyze the acquired initial image data from the fMRI system. According to the analyzed data, superior, middle and inferior frontal gyrus, superior and inferior parietal lobule, fusiform gyrus, lingual gyrus, and bilateral cerebellum were significantly activated during participants' carrying-out experimental design. The network model was consisting of six nodes (ROIs) and its six connections. These results suggested the notion that the activation and connections of these regions mean that experimental design process couldn't succeed just a memory retrieval process. These results enable the scientific experimental design process to be examined from the cognitive neuroscience perspective, and may be used as a basis for developing a teaching-learning program for scientific experimental design such as brain-based science education curriculum.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.101-112
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• 2017

We investigated the neural representation of reward probability recognition and its neural connectivity with other regions of the brain. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we used a simple guessing task with different probabilities of obtaining rewards across trials to assay local and global regions processing reward probability. The results of whole brain analysis demonstrated that lateral prefrontal cortex, inferior parietal lobe, and postcentral gyrus were activated during probability-based decision making. Specifically, the higher the expected value was, the more these regions were activated. Fronto-parietal connectivity, comprising inferior parietal regions and right lateral prefrontal cortex, conjointly engaged during high reward probability recognition compared to low reward condition, regardless of whether the reward information was extrinsically presented. Finally, the result of a regression analysis identified that cortico-subcortical connectivity was strengthened during the high reward anticipation for the subjects with higher cognitive impulsivity. Our findings demonstrate that interregional functional involvement is involved in valuation based on reward probability and that personality trait such as cognitive impulsivity plays a role in modulating the connectivity among different brain regions.

• The Journal of Korean Physical Therapy
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.421-428
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• 2005

The tenn 'Brain plasticity' has been identified that our central nervous system is continuously being adapted and modulated according to environmental needs and demands, and has been used to encompass the multifarious mechanisms related to learning, development, and recovery from damage to the nervous system. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate cortical reorganization in a 26-year-old right-handed hemiparetic patient with traumatic primary motor cortex (M1) injury, using functional MRI (fMRI). The unaffected (left) primary sensori-motor cortex centered on the precentral knob was activated during unaffected (right) hand movements. However, the medial area of the injured M1 was activated during affected (left) hand movements. It seems that the motor function of the affected hand in this patient was reorganized into the medial area of the injured precentral knob. These investigations provide a great useful information and clinical evidences with the specialized clinician in stroke physical therapy about patient's prognosis and therapeutic guidelines.

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.199-222
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• 2014

Functional Magnetic Resonance Angiography (fMRA) was a technoscientific innovation that allows scientists to directly view the changes made in the blood vessels of a brain. fMRA was first developed at Neuroscience Research Institute (NRI) in Korea. fMRA mainly utilizes 7 Tesla MRI technology, and NRI is equipped with the instrument. First article on fMRA was published in 2008, and two more papers in 2010 and 2012 consecutively had been published on the newly developed technique. However, fMRA is a competitive technology with existing fMRI. Both techniques capture microvascular changes in a brain, and by doing it, both techniques visualize the cognitive and affective changes. fMRI technology was introduced by Seiji Ogawa in the early 1990's and has been widely used since then. In contrast, fMRA was a newer technology and rather unknown. Developers of fMRA in NRI used series of signifiant-politics in order to make it better known to scientific community as well as public. By resetting the boundaries of existing concept of fMRI, they tried to lower the threshold of a new concept/technique. This case study shows how technoscientists use semiotic strategies governing new technology.

• Journal of Acupuncture Research
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.114-133
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• 2003

Objective : The meridian theory in oriental medicine explains that Sp9(Yinlingquan) has been considered very important for gynecological disorders, spleen and stomach disorders, and water metabolic disorders. Functional MRI is the best method of showing the evidences of the effect of the Electro-acupuncture treatment through scientific methods. On this supposition, Electro-acupuncture stimulation on Sp9(Yinlingquan) was carried out on six healthy volunteers, using the gradient echo sequence with the 3.0T whole-body MRI system(ISOL). Methods : Electro-acupuncture stimulation on Sp9(Yinlingquan), the experiment was carried out on six healthy volunteers, using the gradient echo sequence with the 3.0T whole-body MRI system(ISOL). After the needle insertion on right Sp9(Yinlingquan), 2Hz of electric stimulation was given for 30 seconds, repeated five times, with 30 seconds' intervals. The Image analysis including motion correction, talairach transformation, and smoothing was done using SPM99. Results : The electro-acupuncture stimulation on Sp9(Yinlingquan) activates Brodmann Area 13, 19, 22, 39, 40, 47 which may be the central pathways of the electro-acupuncture stimulation on Sp9(Yinlingquan). We also hypothesize that those brain areas may be directly or indirectly related with the mechanism of the effect of electro-acupuncture stimulation on Sp9(Yinlingquan).

• The Korean Journal of Physiology
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.19-25
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• 1994

On the basis of morphological and functional studies, it is now established that there exist multiple motor representation areas in the frontal lobe of subhuman primates. Recent development of analysis on cerebral critical organization in human subjects, utilizing novel techniques of PET and MRI, provides evidence of corresponding motor areas. Each area has its unique sources of inputs from the thalamus and from other parts of the cerebral cortex. To understand functional roles of these multiple motor areas, it is necessary to study neural activity while subjects are performing a variety of motor tasks. In view of high accuracy in spatial and temporal resolution, the analysis of single cells in relation to specific aspects of motor behavior remains to be a powerful research technique. It is with this technique that a number of novel concepts on functional roles of multiple motor areas have been proposed.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.219-223
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• 2009

Objective : Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is frequently used to localize language areas in a non-invasive manner. Various paradigms for presurgical localization of language areas have been developed, but a systematic quantitative evaluation of the efficiency of those paradigms has not been performed. In the present study, the authors analyzed different language paradigms to see which paradigm is most efficient in localizing frontal language areas. Methods : Five men and five women with no neurological deficits participated (mean age, 24 years) in this study. All volunteers were right-handed. Each subject performed 4 tasks, including fixation (Fix), sentence reading (SRI. pseudoword reading (PR), and word generation (WG). Fixation and pseudoword reading were used as contrasts. The functional area was defined as the area(s) with a t-value of more than 3.92 in fMRI with different tasks. To apply an anatomical constraint, we used a brain atlas mapping system, which is available in AFNI, to define the anatomical frontal language area. The numbers of voxels in overlapped area between anatomical and functional area were individually counted in the frontal expressive language area. Results : Of the various combinations, the word generation task was most effective in delineating the frontal expressive language area when fixation was used as a contrast (p<0.05). The sensitivity of this test for localizing Broca's area was 81 % and specificity was 70%. Conclusion : Word generation versus fixation could effectively and reliably delineate the frontal language area. A customized effective paradigm should be analyzed in order to evaluate various language functions.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.277-289
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• 2009

Recently, functional MRI has been used to investigate the neurobiological mechanisms of acupuncture and the specificity of acupoint. The group data tend to be regarded as more important than the individual data in the most of previous studies. This study was designed to investigate the effect of the variability of individual data on the group results. A functional MRI (fMRI) of the whole brain was performed in fifteen healthy subjects during placebo and acupuncture stimulations at the ST36 acupoint. After remaining at rest for 30 seconds, the acupuncture was inserted and twisted at the rate of 2 Hz for 45 seconds and then the acupuncture was removed immediately. This process was repeated three times. Individual and group analyses were performed by voxel-based analyses using SPM2 software. Visual inspections of the activation and deactivation maps from individual sessions have shown the large variability across fifteen subjects. This means that the group data reflected the brain activation responses of only a few subjects. We suggest that the individual data should be presented to demonstrate the effect of acupuncture.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.63-76
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• 2022

Emotional labor, characterized by a dysfunctional type of emotional regulation called surface acting, has detrimental psychological consequences on employees, including depression and social anxiety. Because such disorders exhibit psychological characteristics manifested through brain activation, previous studies have succeeded in distinguishing individuals with depression and social anxiety from healthy controls using their functional connectivity characteristics. However, it has not been established whether the functional connectivity characteristics associated with emotional labor are distinguishable. Thus, we obtained resting-state fMRI data from participants in the emotion labor (EL) group and control (CTRL) group, and we subjected their whole-brain functional connectivity matrices to a linear support vector machine classifier. Our analysis revealed that the EL and CTRL groups could be successfully distinguished on the basis of individuals' connectivity patterns, and confidence in the classification was correlated with the scores on the depression and social anxiety scales. These results are expected to provide insight on the neurobiological characteristics of emotional labor and enable the sorting of employees undergoing adverse emotional labor utilizing neurobiological observations.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.373-380
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• 2009

In general, Independent component analysis (ICA) is a statistical blind source separation technique, used either in spatial or temporal domain. The spatial or temporal ICAs are designed to extract maximally independent sources in respective domains. The underlying sources for spatiotemporal data (sequence of images) can not always be guaranteed to be independent, therefore spatial ICA extracts the maximally independent spatial sources, deteriorating the temporal sources and vice versa. For such data types, spatiotemporal ICA tries to create a balance by simultaneous optimization in both the domains. However, the spatiotemporal ICA suffers the problem of source ambiguity. Recently, constrained ICA (c-ICA) has been proposed which incorporates a priori information to extract the desired source. In this study, we have extended the c-ICA for better analysis of spatiotemporal data. The proposed algorithm, i.e., constrained spatiotemporal ICA (constrained st-ICA), tries to find the desired independent sources in spatial and temporal domains with no source ambiguity. The performance of the proposed algorithm is tested against the conventional spatial and temporal ICAs using simulated data. Furthermore, its performance for the real spatiotemporal data, functional magnetic resonance images (fMRI), is compared with the SPM (conventional fMRI data analysis tool). The functional maps obtained with the proposed algorithm reveal more activity as compared to SPM.