How doctors diagnose and prescribe treatments: a functional magnetic ressonance imaging study of primary care physicians

• Grant number: 12/15438-9
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: November 01, 2012
• End date: October 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Medicine
• Principal Investigator: Eduardo Massad
• Grantee: Eduardo Massad
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina (FM). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• City of the host institution: São Paulo
• Associated researchers: Edson Amaro Junior ; Marcio Antonio dos Santos Melo

Abstract

Physicians generate diagnostic hypotheses in response to symptoms, clinical signs or other information obtained while assessing patients. There are several studies showing that this process can be fast and the accuracy of these hypotheses have a decisive influence on the final diagnosis. We conceptualize that the generation of diagnostic hypotheses is a lexical semantic association process in which diagnostic information evoke the name of associated diseases. Our hypothesis is that the neurocognitive mechanisms involved in medical diagnosis based on pattern recognition are similar to those used in the identification and naming of objects and concepts in everyday life. This hypothesis was tested in the visual domain using radiological diagnosis as an experimental model. The results supported the hypothesis. We intend with the present investigation to test the proposal in the verbal domain, using diagnostic information presented verbally to primary care physicians. Brain activations will be assessed while participants make diagnoses during a session of functional magnetic resonance imaging. In addition we want to test the proposal that prescription of treatments to specific diseases has a neural substrate similar to the generation of diagnostic hypotheses. (AU)

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

MELO, MARCIO; GUSSO, GUSTAVO D. F.; LEVITES, MARCELO; AMARO, JR., EDSON; MASSAD, EDUARDO; LOTUFO, PAULO A.; ZEIDMAN, PETER; PRICE, CATHY J.; FRISTON, KARL J.. How doctors diagnose diseases and prescribe treatments: an fMRI study of diagnostic salience. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS, v. 7, MAY 2 2017. (12/15438-9)