Do you know what YOUR brain looks like?

We often participate in studies at the Bauer Memory Development Lab at Emory and this one was a pretty cool one. Hannah was shown series of photographs and then went into an fMRI scanner and was shown another series of photos. Some of the photos were different and some were the same and she had a controller to indicate whether she had seen the photo before or if it was new. While she was doing this, the fMRI takes photos of her brain. The purpose of the study is to see the pathways that are used during memory recall in children. When we were done she got a CD of the entire fMRI. That's a full scan from left to right and top to bottom of her brain along with a series of images that are animated showing the actual firing of the neurons. It was incredibly fascinating! And, very difficult. She was so controlled and lay perfectly still for almost 45mins in the scanner. She was given total control over how much she wanted to do and made it through the entire thing! The next day we took the CD into her class and showed them the process of the brain scan and the results. How many people have a complete scan of their brain in action at age 8??