Question: what was your most extrodanairy brain that you looked at?

Emma Ross answered on 19 Jun 2013:

Its hard to say what makes a brain extra-ordinary! Beacuse we test how well the brain sends signals to the muscles, our tests don’t tell us how clever someone is, or how fast their brain works, but it does tell us how good the motor cortex is, the part of the brain that sends signals to our muscles, and how good the muscles are at taking this information and producing force with it, that allows us to move.

We do find that people have different responses to brain stimulation – some are very receptive, and we only need a small amount of stimulation to get a response in their brains and muscles. However, some people don’t have a very good response at all, and in some cases we turn the stimulator right up to full power, and their brains still do not respond! This obviously isn’t because they haven’t got a brain, or because its not working, but we think it might be because their brains are positioned slightly differently in their skulls – maybe tilted slightly in one direction, or it may be that there is a large amout of space between their skull bone, and the brain (which is filled with fluid).