Question: what is your favourite scientific experiment

Rebecca Dewey answered on 15 Jun 2015:

I did a really nice experiment during my PhD on areas of blood flow in the brain. I was using a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique where I magnetically label regions of the neck that contain arteries that carry blood to the brain. I was labelling one group of arteries at a time: (1) left internal carotid artery, supplying the left-middle and left-front of the brain, (2) right internal carotid artery, supplying the right-middle and right-front of the brain, (3) vertebral and basilar artery, supplying the back of the brain and (4) anterior cerebral artery, supplying the front-middle of the brain. The “labelling” was purely magnetic and was using stuff that the MRI scanner can do already, so no injections or anything were needed, the person just lies in the MRI scanner like normal. I did the experiment on 10 different people and I got a really beautiful atlas of which areas of the brain are supplied by each artery. It really changed my thinking about the subject to realise that blood flow isn’t like some undefined magic, it’s very like plumbing and basically it works the same in all healthy people. I was very proud of that work!