The human brain has evolved over many millenniums. But over the last three centuries or so the analytical power of mind has accelerated many fold and at a much faster rate. There is a gradual increase in the desire to understand the science of the human mind and of the brain. The brain science in action we need to know has to be experienced at the miniaturized the atomic and molecular level. Newton around three centuries ago was amazed to see that an apple from a tree falls to the ground and not the other way around. Our earth is like a sphere hanging (due to gravitational forces among our star the Sun and other planets revolving round it) in space. All points on earth are equally exposed to the space around it and yet the apple is attracted toward the earth. This is despite apple’s density is higher than the density of air space surrounding it. This thought about the act of science was just a curiosity in Newton’s mind. Science is curiosity and curiosity is science. The science in its mathematical analytical aspect was little developed in Newton’s time. Soon the art of thinking became the art of scientific creation. The science became a tool, of production of technologies those followed. It changed the humanity forever. This was the beginning of the discovery of the forces of gravity which keep the sun, earth, moon, the galaxies, etc. in a dynamic equilibrium. In fact the universe we live in makes the human mind create science all the time.

The mathematical techniques e.g., the calculus, algebra, trigonometry, coordinate geometry, etc. then evolved to quantify the dynamics of planetary motion. It created the technology of aviation industry, space travel and created many other inventions we take for granted. The technologies that have evolved over the last century have created wonderful applications in our, day today life. To mention a few are aviation, satellite communication, microwaves as source of energy in household cooking, mobile phones, TV, etc. Mind imagines out of curiosity sometimes impossible but wonderful things. In today’s environment of economics human mind is restricted to limit its scope of thinking. This is to limit imagination now. It is to fit according to the survival in the materialistic world we live in. The scope of the thinking today is restricted to the art of money making as the main priority. Money drives science and the science is restricted in its horizon to simply making more money. So the scope of science is not unlimited now in the environment we live. The Newtonian’s art of thinking was free and, unlimited. It was on finding the secrets about the universe around us. The science and, the technology that developed then was about the dynamics of large physical bodies like planets, aeroplanes, cars, etc. The society today cannot live without the technologies that have been developed. Think of the indoor and outdoor comforts we enjoy in our day to day life. They are not the results of restricted art of thinking. So far the major developments that have taken place are about the macroscopic world which we can see, and feel around us. But there is another world the microscopic world. This is the world of ensemble of nano-scale atoms and molecules which make the world of living beings e.g., our body.

The science of the dynamic functions of the atoms and molecules happening in a living body keeps a living being going. The nature has worked out the art of the control of life quite well. Science has yet to work out many mysteries. Even god likes to keep many secrets for a scientist to find out. The activities of atoms and molecules on a nano scale in our body cannot be seen by a naked eye. To view their behavior in small volumes we use sophisticated tools, like the electron microscope, atomic force microscopy, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) etc. They are expensive tools. But they expose the secrets of nature which would not be known otherwise. The wealth they generate e.g., a good health system, industries, etc., more than compensate, the cost of the art of the creativity of the human mind. Human mind has the power of the art of thinking to inherit the science of the universe we live in. The microscopic secrets of the human brain science are not externally visible. They are the invisible, science of the nature. To work them out would be a science of our survival.

The human body is made of the microscopic world of the atoms, molecules, electrons, etc. These tiny particles control the day to day and moment to moment functions of our brain, mind, and the body. The dynamics (Figs. 1.1 and 1.2) of these particles is processed in our brain without us knowing how it works. How does the molecular dynamics coordinates about what is happening in our brain? It also controls the other parts of the body? There comes the art of thinking. In today’s science we call it as art of modeling about the unknown things. In this work an effort is made to expose the art of imaging the activities happening in the human brain. The technology we have at present about the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is called as the conventional MRI. It started about half a century ago as a curiosity tool to understand the phenomena of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in solids and liquids. But as the time progressed, it slowly found its way into applications in imaging in plants, animals and the humans. Human brain is made of soft matter including tissues, molecules, electrons, atoms, nuclei, etc. The electrons with their negative charge are orbiting the nuclei due to coulomb attraction from the nucleus with its positive charge. Due to the quantum mechanical art of nature an electron can only stay in a fixed quantized stationary orbit. The outer slightly loosely bound electrons around the nucleus and the coordinated geometry of the atoms and molecules establishes the chemistry of events happening in the brain.

Electrons simultaneously can be part of many molecules in a region. There is like a smeared out cloud of the electrons shrouding the much deeper secrets of the nuclei. MRI through the magnetic spins of the electrons, atoms and molecules spread locally over a small region called as a voxel images a small region in time. Scanning the small regions (voxels) one at a time in a sequential order over the whole brain by the use of RF radiation and collating them one can develop a planar image of the whole brain. This is a broad the simplest and the crudest mode of imaging. It is referred to as the chemical shift imaging (CSI). The electrons buried deep inside the atoms, molecules, in tissues are stable and are not electrically active. They however provide the necessary background in controlling the science of the brain over all. Near the surface of the macromolecules, charges form the basic equilibrium structure of a tissue. The charges create a collective reactive protected equilibrium for the brain. The equilibrium among the molecules is over distances varying from nanometers (nm) to millimeters (mm) to centimeters (cm). The common molecular electron charges have a magnetism associated with them. It is loosely called as the spin magnetism.

Inside each molecule the atoms act like small disc shaped magnets of the size of around nm. The rotation of the electrons around it own axis plus around the nuclear axis constitutes the total magnetism of the atom. The atoms add up to produce the resultant magnetic moment for the molecule. It is the overall effect over many tens and hundreds of nm that is the key to the performance of the brain. There is some kind of local magnetic order in the brain in the short range. The human brain is overall electrically and magnetically neutral. But over small regions say hundreds of nm there is an effective local magnetic field at any point created by the local group of nuclei. This magnetic field can be of the order of 1 Tesla (somewhat lesser due to the medium of the brain). It polarizes the region around it into a magnetic order along its direction. Every small (around a micron wide) region all over the brain has an independent magnetic order of its own. But these orders are randomly distributed with an overall effect being zero. There is interaction or say communication between all these small regions to make the moment to moment activities e.g., neurotransmission, metabolism, etc. to continue. The surrounding mobile fluids like water, blood, etc. keep the overall all activities of the brain and the body alive and thus keep us going. The overall simplified picture of the brain has in fact to be quantified to enable understand the functions of the brain. It amounts to understanding the order–disorder processes on nm and ns (nanosecond) scales. This is an impossible situation. There now comes the art of thinking.

One needs to make a machine which can probe the secret dynamics of the brain. The new machine will have to do quantum imaging with minimum disturbance to the brain. The present MRI machine strives to achieve wonderful things. But it still has long way to go. The more the knowledge is disseminated about MRI in a simplified manner to the masses the better is the chance for its further development. This is the aim behind this exposition. MRI allows us to work out the dynamics of the invisible processes happening in the brain by using non-invasive RF (radio frequency) electromagnetic radiation. The MRI technology tries to simulate an order of its own in the brain by external means. It mimics a probe by external means to find out the local magnetic order in the brain created by nature. The external means stimulate the local order and it is measurable in the laboratory with minimum disturbance to the internal order. Since the internal order is on a nm scale, simulating a superficial internal situation in the brain, in the laboratory, can be a formidable task. The MRI machine tries to achieve a close to the real situation in the brain. A static magnetic field larger than 1 Tesla is first applied through the skull. This direction in the MRI literature is referred to as the Z-direction. What this field does is that all the tiny magnets i.e., the spins bound to the molecules, tissues, and the free ions as part of the moving fluids etc. are oriented magnetically along the Z-direction. The RF radiation applied in the perpendicular direction to the static field allows to manipulate the spins in space and time for imaging.

There is some kind of regional as well as overall magnetic order in the brain. It is experienced through a local distribution in the size and the extent of the arrangement of the spins. This order produced is static as well as dynamic. It changes over space as well as time. This is because the atoms, molecules, tissues, fluids, etc. are reactive and interact with each other. The dynamics of the atoms and molecules is governed by the rules of quantum science. In quantum science the statics and the dynamics of the atoms and molecules is a totally different matter. The tiny molecules not only move in space and time but also react chemically with each other. They also communicate electronically with each other and also exchange a few quantum’s of energy in the process. These objects are guided by the rules of quantum mechanics (QM). This is in contrast to the dynamics of the larger bodies like the aeroplanes, space shuttle, etc. The large body’s dynamics is a continuous one and is controlled by the Newtonian Mechanics (NM). The reactions between atoms and molecules take place in a discrete manner rather than in continuous manner. What it means is that when the amount and direction of interaction is just right a quantum or two of energy is exchanged and so is the information for a particular activity. The most fundamental (smallest) quantum of energy is expressed as ђω. The ђ is the familiar angular Planck’s constant of electromagnetic radiation and ω is the angular frequency of the RF radiation. RF energy is in a narrow band selected in MRI. It is out of the much wider spectrum of the total electromagnetic (EM) radiation spectrum. This is called as the RF band of the EM radiation. The band is selected because the reactions between atoms and molecules in our body take place in this band of energy.

The MRI machine uses RF radiation for its operation. The RF radiation extends over frequencies in the MHz (~10⁶ Hz) range and in wavelength over the meters range. To probe the brain the RF radiation is applied in a perpendicular direction to the applied static field. This direction is referred to as the X-direction (refer to Fig. 1.1). The RF field is applied in pulses in time in the X-direction so as to project the spins in the X–Y plane. In the time in between the pulses called as the evolution time the spins decay and produce electrical signals in the X–Y plane. The spins are used to collect the naturally happening events in the brain in a controlled manner. The signals collected carry the signatures of the locally happening events. This information is collected by a receiver as a field induction decay. There is an asymmetric distribution of the field induction decay with a particular characteristic time. The characteristic decay time of spins in the X–Y plane is called as the transverse relaxation time T₂. This becomes the source of the so called T₂, weighted image. Alternately the spins can be projected from +Z to −Z direction by applying the 180° RF pulse along the X-direction. The decay of the electrical signals induced by the spins in this case can be measured as the spins move from −Z towards the +Z direction. The inversion of spins method collects information about the decay time which is called as the longitudinal relaxation time T₁ and is present in the X–Z and Y–Z planes.

The asymmetry due to chemical and physical events happening, in the X–Z and Y–Z planes becomes the source of image called as the T₁ weighted image. The broader T₁ and T₂ weighted imaging restricted to mm³ to cm³ voxels with little insight into atomic and molecular level intricacies is the major source of information in the conventional MRI. The modulations of the incident RF radiation received back as echoes over selected voxels in a sequence all over the brain are later coordinated in a computer program and produced as an image. The data collected provides a detailed bank of the scan of the events over space and time. One can analyze data much further rather than just looking it as source of an image to understand the human brain science deep to the roots. The nano science of the brain is a quantum one. One needs to slowly approach the quantum chemistry of the natural events and image them. The emphasis as multi-quantum magnetic resonance imaging (MQMRI) rather than just MRI in this work has two prong purpose. Firstly it helps advance imaging on the real natural scale that is the nano scale. Secondly it induces education about quantum science over a much wider population. So far it has remained within the domain of physics, chemistry and mathematics (PCM) experts. Further it has only been a part of the university level education so far. It did not form secondary school level part of the education system. This is the status all over the world today. It is high time for a change. The UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization) owes this initiative to the education system on an international scale.