PSY 240 Brain Studies

INCLUDES SPEAKER NOTES AND SLIDES

On one side of the cylinder is an X-ray tube that projects an X-ray beam through the head to an X-ray detector mounted on the other side. The X-ray tube and detector automatically rotate around the head of the patient at one level of the brain, taking many individual X-ray photographs as they rotate. The meager information in each X-ray photograph is combined

by a computer to generate a CT scan of one horizontal section of the brain. Then, the X-ray tube and detector are moved along the axis of the patients body to another level of the brain, and the process is repeated. Scans of eight or nine

horizontal brain sections are typically obtained from a patient; combined, they provide a three-dimensional representation

of the brain (Pinel, 2011, p. 104).