This is what the hundreds of muscles in our lips, tongue and jaw look like as they work
together to produce sound.
To image how we sing, researchers from the University of Illinois used a Magnetic Resonance
Imaging or MRI machine.
It uses a powerful magnetic field to detect small changes in how much energy your different
body parts emit.
It’s just one way science can see into your brain.
While MRI can look at your brain structure, fMRI - functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
- can measure activity within your brain.
It can detect which parts of your brain have an increased blood flow and are using more
oxygen – the idea is those parts of your brain are more active.
And we’ve done some pretty weird things inside fMRI machines.
In one study, participants with a fear of snakes had their brains scanned in an fMRI
machine, while a live snake was brought into close proximity to their heads.
Researchers noticed that a courage response kicked into gear.
When the participants were being courageous, activity in their amygdala, a brain region
associated with fear, decreased as their reported fear increased.
Weird, right?
Another study scanned people’s brains in an fMRI…. while they watched a tarantula
being placed at varying distances next to their foot.
But what they were actually watching was a pre-taped video, and the spider wasn’t in
the machine with them.
Still, different fear networks in the participant's brain were active depending on how close they
thought the spider was.
And a certain brain area was more active when the spider was creeping towards their foot,
rather than away from it.
On a happier note, another study asked rappers to freestyle rap inside an fMRI machine.
The researchers saw that improvising lyrics activated many different areas of their brains
– those associated with motivation, language, emotion and motor function.
The rappers entered a “flow state”, where you’re completely immersed in an activity.
It may happen to you when you read a good book or go skiing.
And if those experiments aren't weird enough, in 2009 a researcher did a psychological study
with... a dead salmon.
In an fMRI machine.
The salmon was shown photos of people and asked to determine what emotions they were
experiencing.
And when they analysed the data, researchers saw activity in the salmon's brain.
The dead salmon's brain.
The salmon study was a red herring.
The false discovery shows something called the look-elsewhere effect, where a statistically
significant observation may have arisen by chance because of the size of the area being
searched.
Researchers can correct for this, the salmon researchers could have too, but sometimes
statistical analyses aren't always as rigorous as they should be.
But other than that dead salmon, we’ve used fMRI to learn some pretty cool things about
your brain.
It’s a pretty swimming place.
If you don’t already, subscribe to BrainCraft for more brainy videos.
And occasionally terrible jokes.
I’m trout-a here.