Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which lights up the brain areas activated when a person carries out a task, is one of the most powerful tools in neuroscience.But for measuring social behaviors, the set-up is less than ideal, to say the least: participants must lie still in the dark, coffin-like machine for about an hour.In the May issue of Neuroimage, researchers describe a clever method that can record brain activity during live, back-and-forth social interactions. The technique allows researchers to see the brain regions important for joint attention — the act of looking at an object at the same time someone else does.Read more at...SFARI, July 2010.