Health Issue: 'Brain Scans'

'Brain Scans predict your  action better than you can' Brain Imaging in Behavioral Medicine and Clinical Neuroscience Washington: Brain scans may be able to predict what you will do better than you can yourself, and might offer a powerful tool for advertisers or health officials seeking to motivate consumers, researchers said.        They found a way to interpret "real time" brain images to show whether people who viewed messages about using sunscreen would actually use sunscreen during the following week. The scans were more accurate than the vounteers were, Mily Falk and cooeagues at the University of California Los Angeles reported in the Journalof Neuroscience.        "We are trying to figure out whether there is hidden wisdom that the brain contains," Falk said in a telephone interview. "Many people 'decide' to do things, but then don't do them," Matthew Liebeman, a professor of pasychology who led the study, added.         But with functional magnetic resonance imaging or FMRI, Falk and colleagues were able to go beyond good intentions to predict actual behgavior. FMRI uses a magnetic field to measure blood flow in the brain. It can show which brain regions are more active compared to others, but requires careful interpretation.