[Functional imaging of the human brain with conventional MRI].

It was shown in 1991 by Belliveau and co-workers that the activation of the human brain can be visualized in a completely noninvasive way by MRI. First publications coming from the US claimed that very high magnetic field strength or echo planar imaging, both available only at a few research sites, would be necessary to do this job. Recently, it was demonstrated that functional imaging of the human brain can be done with high spatial resolution MRI using conventional FLASH-sequences with the commercial widely available 1,5 Tesla systems. First results have been reported for visual as well as primary motor cortex activation in healthy volunteers. The key to a successful application of the conventional technique lies in the design of extremely low bandwidth, long echo-time FLASH-sequences with high spatial resolution.