The brain became a celebrity this week when Ariana Grande shared the results of a scan of her brain seemingly showing signs of severe PTSD:
Is there any science behind this? Not really. The source of the scan isn't clear but I'm 99% sure that the image was taken at one of Dr Daniel Amen's controversial clinics. Amen uses similar graphics in his brain scans. If it is an Amen scan, then the 'blobs' seen on Grande's brain represent areas of increased or decreased cerebral blood flow (CBF) as assessed using a method called SPECT. SPECT is a fairly old neuroimaging methodology that forms the heart of Amen's network of clinics. Bear in mind that the blobs on an image like this are statistical illustrations. A scan like this is not a photograph or x-ray of structural changes, and without knowing the context in which the scan was taken and ...
