Betsy Nabel was right about MRI's

Everyone listen up. Chris' mom was right. There is absolutely NO NEED to put yourself through the hell that is a 1.85 hour fMRI scan for psychological research. NO NEED. Let me tell you all a little story about how I needed money, sorely, and decided to partake in a lousy fMRI study.

So the researcher contacted me a week ago, asked me to choose a two hour block of time to swing down to "Martino's Imaging Center" in Charlestown. First hint that this experiment will end in complete failure: the research center is named "Martino's". Sounds like a the name of a sleazy fast-food pizza place. In fact, they almost let me grab two pizza flavored taquitos off of a rolling grill before my study, but they decided the traces of lead in the ingredients would lead to less accurate MRI readings.

So I hopped on the bike, bound for Charlestown. I allowed myself 40 minutes to make the trip, in the likely event that their horrible directions would get me lost. I trucked it past the Bunker Hill Community College, where mere days earlier a young Anders Moore took his written portion of the foreign serivce exam. Time ticking, feeling close to the abandoned warehouses that must store this MRI machine, I trucked on. Trucked on over a broken beer bottle, I did...

... pppsssssstttttttt

Flat tire. Middle of the street crossing Rt. 1 into Charlestown. Game over. After a bout of profanity that would offend even the Miller brothers, I sprinted towards the wharf, dragging bike, sweating profusely. After arriving 10 minutes late for the study, I met Lindsay, a cheerful, blond lab assistant who led me to an empty classroom to fill out paperwork. She left me alone to sign forms which took all of 38 seconds to fill out, and left me to wait another 22 minutes alone to think about what I'd done to deserve this. I resorted to scanning my only reading material, a purple coupon guide to the Spar grocery store in Austria. Würst and Stiegl are as cheap as ever. Go figure.

Finally Lindsay came back and rushed me to the MRI tube, apologizing for her delay. She then strapped me down in the tube, taping my hands to two keypads with which to record my responses to video instructions and tasks reflected to my eyes by a slanted mirror and monitor in the tube. The 'tests' referred to were responses to racial profiling and involved making social judgments of people of other races. Initial interest turned quickly to a claustrophobic nightmare as I was bombarded for 1.8 hours with photos of Asian teens and confusing stories and puzzles to trick my short term memory. No breaks. No movement. Head was strapped to a board with a hockey goalie ish helmet fixture to send magnetic pulses through my highly irritated brain lobes, while being bombarded with the noise of magnetic pulses. (Magnetic pulses in an MRI tube sound very similar to the noise a snowplow on I-93 makes while scratching dry pavement at 70mph).

After the 2nd worst two hours of my life...

http://harvardnordic.blogspot.com/2007/12/new-definition-of-pain-and-suffering.html

...I was pulled out of the tube and vented my less than cordial opinions on how MRI's should be run, especially with students with flat bicycle tires. Lindsay, feeling terrible, shelled out $85 and a taxi voucher to North Station. I ended up being kicked off the green line 1 stop away from Park Street and the bike-friendly red line by a disgruntled employee and had to walk the last couple blocks from government center in a windy snow squall. I was sure that Lindsay was running behind me with a videocamera, that the real study wouldn't end until I made it back to campus.

So next time you need quick cash and think that lying, motionless, in a noisy, claustrophobic tube is the way to get it... think again. Or just hit the CLER lab.

Better yet, listen to Betsy Nabel. MRI's are toxic.

Still trembling with residual magnetic resonance,

-D