A system for assessing the medical effectiveness of therapies such as
pharmaceutical medications for use in treating central nervous system
disorders. Functional magnetic resonance imaging techniques are utilized
in measuring neural activity induced by specific activation tasks in
specific regions of the brain that are known to be affected by a central
nervous system disorder. The levels of neural activity induced in
patients subject to the disorder when on and off of the therapy are
compared and then compared with normative data generated with respect to
healthy individuals under comparable conditions. These comparisons
quantify and assess the efficacy of the therapy.
