Anyone had their brain scanned?

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The only problem with SPECT is that one or two of the people who have most popularized them, have imagined themselves to be able to diagnose a whole lot of things they can't actually diagnose, with the scan.

The scan is good for looking at what the brain is doing at a particular time. It can't necessarily tell you why it's doing it.

A person I know, and I, both went to the same (famous) SPECT clinic. While we believe the results of our scans to be accurate to our brains, we were both told a lot of things about ourselves that were highly incorrect, because the person who ran the place was very arrogant about his ability to "diagnose" a person's problems entirely by the SPECT (instead of just using the scan as an aid to understanding).

My friend was diagnosed with AS, and had never taken recreational drugs, nor been put on psych drugs of any kind. However, the guy who did the SPECT told him that he obviously had heavily abused drugs to get the reading he had.

And while I think the actual readings on my SPECT were accurate, there was a whole mess where people were actually blaming my anger at the time on something about the SPECT scan. When in fact I was angry for specific reasons, not because I had some brain thing making me have rage attacks. (When those things I was mad about stopped happening, I stopped being mad. Hmmm...)

I've had 2 MRI's, both of which showed nothing out of the ordinary.

Such a letdown.

The first was during my time working at a dairy restaurant. Two milk-crates full of ice cream keeled over on my head. I was wearing a thick hood since I was in the freezer, so I thought there was no damage, but I got a nose-bleed 45 minutes later. So I also got my first workman's comp as well!

The second was for bizarre headaches after a groin injury. They still plague me to this day if I go off my medication.

If my brain really is "perfect", it makes my suicide fantasy about blasting head apart onto the guests right after exchanging my wedding vows even more ironic.

I have had tons of crazy brain scans. From the electrodes on the head to the tubes and rings you are stuck through. All of them showed high activity in parts of the brain that average people did not have. Recently diagnosed with AS, I wonder more about those times.

I had a CAT and MRI. Both were normal as they usually are in people with autism/Asperger's. The best scan to detect differences is the functional MRI (fMRI). Differences may also show up on SPECT and PET scans. They aren't very specific. I think about 25% of normal healthy people have abnormal SPECT scans. I think the main difference is reduced blood flow which is probably due to hypercoagulation. One small study of 10 autistics showed that 100% tested positive for hypercoagulation and another showed that Pentoxyfilline (which improves circulation) resulted in a dramatic improvement of autism symptoms.