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aribLast Thursday I participated in an fMRI study run by MIT and Mass. General. The study was examining the parts of the brain that process written language, and how knowledge or lack of knowledge of another language (in this case Hebrew) factor into things.
I arrived at the imaging center and was met by the post-doc running the study, he described what the experiment would entail, and had me fill out several consent forms. After that, I went onto a chaging room and changed out of my metal-laden jeans into scrubs, passed through a powerful metal detector, then went into the scanner room with Chris (the post-doc). I put on earplugs (MRIs are very loud) and lay down on the scanner's bed, which was very narrow. Chris secured my head down to keep it from moving during the scan, and gave me two things to hold. The first was a four-button keyboard to use during the experiment, the other was a bulb that was connected to a buzzer located outside of the scanner room. The bulb was my primary means of communication with the two researchers. They'd ask me a question over the intercom, and I'd squeeze the bulb to indicate either a yes or no. In an emergency, I could just talk, and it'd be picked up by the intercom, but talking would require moving my head, which would mess up the scan.
The keyboard was used for the experiments, which I'll describe soon. A reflector was fitted just above my eyes, to reflect the monitor images that would be used for the experiments.
After I was positioned on the bed, it was moved into the actual scanner, which was a very narrow tube. With the earplugs in, the sounds of the machinery warming up sounded reminiscent of, of all things, the interrogation robot on the Death Star in Star Wars (yes, I'm a geek).
First, they ran a few anatomical scans of my brain. This was done so that they'd know where to aim the scanner for the actual study. This was also of some concern to me, medically. When my grandfather had his first stroke, around six years ago, they ran some imaging scans of his brain, and learned that he was born without most of his corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is the part of your brain that enables the right and left halves of your brain to communicate. (That my grandfather was able to lead an ordinary life without that piece of brain is impressive, to say the least). If that were the case with me, I wouldn't have been able to participate in the experiment, and they'd have pulled me from the scanner. As it turns out, my brain's intact, and they let me have some pictures of the anatomical scans.
There were two main types of experiments. For both experiments I watched Hebrew and English nouns, strings of digits, English nonsense letters and line drawings appear on the screen. In ine experiment, they'd move either to the right or the bottom of the screen, and I'd hit a button corresponding to direction. In the second experiment, the same words, numbers, characters and images appeared on the screen, and I'd press a button if they repeated. In another experiment, I just watched the same images appear in a very rapid fashion. After the language study portion was done, I did some of the same tasks for a similar experiment based on face and image recognition.
All told, the study took two hours, it was a lot more tiring than I thought it'd be, but it was fun, in a way. I'll get a copy of the study when it's published, and I'll get a check for $75 for my troubles, which is definitely a good thing.
I arrived at the imaging center and was met by the post-doc running the study, he described what the experiment would entail, and had me fill out several consent forms. After that, I went onto a chaging room and changed out of my metal-laden jeans into scrubs, passed through a powerful metal detector, then went into the scanner room with Chris (the post-doc). I put on earplugs (MRIs are very loud) and lay down on the scanner's bed, which was very narrow. Chris secured my head down to keep it from moving during the scan, and gave me two things to hold. The first was a four-button keyboard to use during the experiment, the other was a bulb that was connected to a buzzer located outside of the scanner room. The bulb was my primary means of communication with the two researchers. They'd ask me a question over the intercom, and I'd squeeze the bulb to indicate either a yes or no. In an emergency, I could just talk, and it'd be picked up by the intercom, but talking would require moving my head, which would mess up the scan.
The keyboard was used for the experiments, which I'll describe soon. A reflector was fitted just above my eyes, to reflect the monitor images that would be used for the experiments.
After I was positioned on the bed, it was moved into the actual scanner, which was a very narrow tube. With the earplugs in, the sounds of the machinery warming up sounded reminiscent of, of all things, the interrogation robot on the Death Star in Star Wars (yes, I'm a geek).
First, they ran a few anatomical scans of my brain. This was done so that they'd know where to aim the scanner for the actual study. This was also of some concern to me, medically. When my grandfather had his first stroke, around six years ago, they ran some imaging scans of his brain, and learned that he was born without most of his corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is the part of your brain that enables the right and left halves of your brain to communicate. (That my grandfather was able to lead an ordinary life without that piece of brain is impressive, to say the least). If that were the case with me, I wouldn't have been able to participate in the experiment, and they'd have pulled me from the scanner. As it turns out, my brain's intact, and they let me have some pictures of the anatomical scans.
There were two main types of experiments. For both experiments I watched Hebrew and English nouns, strings of digits, English nonsense letters and line drawings appear on the screen. In ine experiment, they'd move either to the right or the bottom of the screen, and I'd hit a button corresponding to direction. In the second experiment, the same words, numbers, characters and images appeared on the screen, and I'd press a button if they repeated. In another experiment, I just watched the same images appear in a very rapid fashion. After the language study portion was done, I did some of the same tasks for a similar experiment based on face and image recognition.
All told, the study took two hours, it was a lot more tiring than I thought it'd be, but it was fun, in a way. I'll get a copy of the study when it's published, and I'll get a check for $75 for my troubles, which is definitely a good thing.
