Dual-Headed MRI Machine Makes it possible for Cuddling During Scans [Health]

Right now, getting an MRI scan means you may have be still-and alone-in a huge machine. Because of some clever researchers though, future fMRI scanners might possibly be double-headed-meaning that you would be able to bring a buddy for simultaneous, cuddle-filled brain scans.

Two heads are better than one-particularly in case you’re studying the brain activity underlying social interaction. The issue is that imaging technologies reminiscent of MRI have only been ready to handle one brain at a time – in the past. Ray Lee at Princeton University has developed the realm’s first dual-headed fMRI scanner . The innovation allows the simultaneous imaging of the brain activity of two people lying within the same scanner.

Usually, a lone person lies inside a scanner’s narrow tunnel, cocooned by powerful magnets and radio-frequency coils which detect how hydrogen atoms within the body respond to magnetic fields, or how the flow of oxygenated blood changes resulting from brain activity. Although it’s possible to squeeze two adults into most MRI machines – Willibrord Weijmar Schultz at the University of Groningen within the Netherlands famously scanned the bodies of couples as they copulated inside an MRI -attempting to scan both their brains immediately would produce too fuzzy an image.

So Lee designed a pair of coils that fits into a scanner, providing two distinct loops during which to put each participant’s head (see picture). He also fitted a window between the coils so participants can see one another. ” This opens up a new area of MRI,” says Lucien Levy , head of neuro-radiology at George Washington University Medical Center in Washington DC. ” I haven’t seen anything like this.”

To test the scanner, Lee asked couples to lie facing one another and blink in unison. Brain activity inside the fusiform gyrus – serious about facial recognition – was tightly correlated. Lee also asked couples to continually embrace and release one another, and observed similarly synchronised brain activity. He announced his leads to November 2010 at the Society for Neuroscience conference in San Diego, California.

” In close proximity, people are likely to mimic each other in every kind of the way, especially through non-verbal signals,” says Marco Iacoboni at the University of California, L. a.. ” Now we will be able to examine brain activity of an intimate pair copying each other in real time. That hasn’t been done before.”

James Coan at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville can also be wanting to test the device: ” People distribute neural processing across multiple brains when solving problems,” he says. ” You essentially contract out element of a given problem to another person’s mind. Lee’s work would give us the opportunity to work out two brains reacting to a difficulty simultaneously.”

Jesse Rissman at Stanford University in California says it remains unclear just how advantageous scanning people within the same machine might be compared with scanning people in numerous machines who are linked by video. He points out that if people move around too much inside a scanner, they disrupt the signal, so interactions could also be limited to small gestures.

But Coan stresses the potency of even minor actions: ” Couples could hold each other or rub each other’s back,” he says, ” and simply having another human face inches from their own is the most important stimulus. With a bit creativity, the sky’s the limit for understanding how brains respond to each other.”

Image: Ray F. Lee

New Scientist reports, explores and interprets the implications of human endeavour set inside the context of society and culture, providing comprehensive coverage of science and technology news.

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This post is tagged: george washington university, two heads are better than one, university medical center, university of groningen, washington university medical