• Question: Was it cool to look inside your brain?

    Asked by unity1 to Carolyn on 15 Mar 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Carolyn McGettigan

      Carolyn McGettigan answered on 15 Mar 2010:

      Yes it was quite cool, though I found it a bit spooky too as I’m so used to looking at other people’s brains. I participated in an experiment where we did impressions of other people speaking, and was very proud to see that my brain gave very strong activations in sensible places to do with speech production. Hurrah!

      Actually, I’ve only been scanned once because I’m left-handed. There is a lot of research suggesting that the left side of the brain is more important for language processing, and that this is the case for 90% of right-handed people, but only 75% of left-handed people. When we run experiments with speech and language, we usually only run about 16-20 people. So, we like to match them to each other as well as possible – therefore, we usually only test right-handers. In my case, it turned out that I do show left-dominant activation, like most other people.

      One funny thing I did realise after looking at my MRI scan from all angles was that I have a very long head (from front to back). Seriously! I’ve seen a lot of brains and mine is strangely long… Hats never fit me : (

Comments

  • Photo: Joe

    Joe commented on :

    That’s fantastic — I like the idea of using a brain scanner to find out why hats don’t fit! 🙂

  • Photo: Carolyn

    Carolyn commented on :

    Seriously! One of my schoolfriends used to call me Alien, specifically after the Ridley Scott variety. I always thought it was because I have a lot of hair. Actually it’s just a big old head.