Hello there reader. I thought I would share an interesting experience, of the Being Starved And Then Put In A Tube And Shown Random Pictures While A Machine Makes Odd Noises And Watches Your Brain variety, with you.
I am a member of the always-wonderful Cambridge BioResource, an NHS/Cambridge University/MRC pool of a few thousand volunteers who have signed up to be used in genetics research. We have all been genotyped (I don’t know how deeply, I’d guess at about 500,000 sites or so), and we can be called upon to take part in particular studies based on our particular genetic information. From the perspective of the researcher, you contact the BioResource and tell them what genetic variants you are looking for (and for what gender and age as well, if you so desire), and the BioResource sends out letters to everyone who fits the bill, asking if they will take part in the trial.
I have been called up twice; the first was part of a Type I Diabetes study - as I gather, I have gene variant that is associated with T1D (early onset diabetes), but never got it, and don’t have a family history of it, and that sort of thing can be useful to track down exactly how genetics is influencing disease.
ANYWAY (and this is going somewhere relatively exciting), the second study, which I took part in yesterday, was a functional MRI (fMRI) study; in such studies, volunteers perform tasks, and the MRI scanner measures blood flow throughout the brain, to try and match brain activity to behaviour. Now I probably shouldn’t say exactly what this particular study involved, since there is a slim possibility that you too will be in the Tube, but the general process involved being put in this Big Metal Tube, with a massive electromagnet, and being shown images and told to make simple dichotic choices.
So far so interesting. The study was a bit dull, since it involved sitting in the tube for many hours, but was also sort of relaxing, and when I came out I felt like I’d just woken up. I imagine it was a bit like being in the womb. BUT, the exciting thing, is that when I left, they gave me a picture of my brain. A PICTURE OF MY BRAIN:
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