They haven't learned much with their new, expensive tool, but they have to report something to back up the original justification or they won't get funding for the next super-neato tech gadget.
“...they won’t get funding for the next super-neato tech gadget.”
Yeah, the MRI - what a useless “gadget”.
This does seem to be rather simple experiment writeup (and I suspect that its publication has less to do with the "new toy" than it does with a student research project completion, or the need for Dr. Walker to publish something now that he's at Berkeley :-), and it is subject to the typical criticisms of fMRI studies, but it does have important implications for future research.
For example, I'd like to see the results of subjects on modafinil (Provigil). If we hop up our soldiers on modafinil for vigilance, for example, might we also have to compensate for emotions...that is, will their amygdala (amygdalae?) be more active and make them more likely to overreact--perhaps leading to a Haditha-like situation, but real this time? Or will drivers using modafanil be more likely to get road rage? And that's just one practical direction this research could go.
I am not a physician, but I have a strong suspicion that sleep is tied in closely with many psychiatric disorders. Many of them are exacerbated by sleep deprivation, and some have symptoms that are remarkably close. For example, an ADD sufferer has suggested that a person could stay awake for several days and then try to focus on a task and accomplish it, and he would get a good feeling for what having ADD is like. Similarly, note the effects of stress and anxiety and how they can be similar to sleep deprivation.