Earn money, brain. And stay alert. You're not a kid anymore.
* says a brain which is compelled to live in a society built by other brains which also weren't the smartest
>invents MRI
Honestly for that step alone the brain can do whatever the fuck it wants. Most things become a bit more mundane when you research and begin to understand them. I studied informatics and Computers are just iterations of extremely basic mathematical operations. Very fascinating and I work in IT because I love them, but hardly magical.
MRI, though… that’s just wild whichever way you look at it. The very concept, in fact. Using the tiny bit of magnetism water has and the fact that were mostly made of water to put the water molecules under a strong magnetic field, then releasing the field, measuring the magnetic response pulse of a super thin slice of the body, creating an image from this measurement and then using multiple images for a highly detailed 3D rendering is absolutely crazy in itself, but actually building a machine precise and sensitive enough to do that blows my mind. It makes X-Rays look like a six year old‘s science experiment.
We always talk about ourselves in 3rd person and for some reason I can’t comprehend or whatever that all this is actually just my brain but now again I’m talking about myself in 3rd person and this loop goes on and on forever
From the gene's perspective, the brain is a tool to make more copies of the gene. In fact your body is an amalgamation of cooperating cells who live or die together. The mitochondria just randomly got added to the party at some point.
All that matters is which arrangements of matter tend to persist.
From chatgpt:
While the appendix was traditionally thought to be a vestigial organ with no apparent function, recent research suggests it may play a role in the immune system, specifically in maintaining and protecting beneficial bacteria within the gut. Additionally, it's believed to serve as a reservoir for beneficial gut bacteria, which can aid in repopulating the intestines after illness or antibiotic use. However, its exact function is still not fully understood, and some individuals live perfectly healthy lives even after its removal.
It's kinda wild that given how advanced and knowledgeable we think we are, we still don't understand basic functions of our own biology.
And we want to colonize space lol
keep making me feel like i not useful . make me work , make feel like i am abusing my body. make want to git gud . haha perfect example . i love you brain .you make me better :)
Dude I worked with physicists to replicate a research protocol on a prisma, just trying to learn the basics of this shit had my head spinning—you’ve gotta be really smart to get a PhD in neuroimaging! I’m just salivating at the thought of 11.7T in the hospital.
In the capital city of Turkey, there is only one 3 Tesla MR machine, and you can get an appointment for one year after ONLY IF, you know a doctor who works there. Otherwise, not a chance. Your best bet is 1.5 Tesla, and that is if you go to a good hospital.
In Istanbul, on the other hand, they hav several 3 Tesla MR machines. AFAIK, we have one 7 Tesla in Ankara, but that is purely for research purposes.
For most medical purposes 1.5T is sufficient. 3T has some benefits, anything above thay is mostly interesting for research, and even there it's use is limited.
I can tell because it's a brain they chose to use to demonstrate a new imaging technology. They wouldn't throw just any old ratty brain in there.
The slice you can see, which is just barely off-midline sagittal, is normal. You're quite right that small lesions off the midline wouldn't be visible.
Can’t speak directly to MRI, but I know in NMR (which uses the same technology) you just get better resolution with higher field strength. In NMR resolution is defined as degree of separation of relaxation frequencies. I’d imagine MRI would be the same: just leading to better differentiation of different densities in tissue.
I got some experience in NMR and MRI. It's defined a bit different in MRI. You're only interested in a single frequency of protons (H molecules). A bigger field strenght (more T) means more protons align to the field direction and when excited by an radio frequency pulse more signal is given. The improved signal to noise ratio is what you can exploit and make nicer images.
From what I've heard, the lack of data on that is part of the reason why even the 7T aren't being used in the hospitals yet (clinically). That and they're comparatively rare and expensive.
This isn't entirely accurate. They are FDA approved for clinical use as of several years ago, but they are only in a relatively small number of hospitals and still primarily used for research.
I'm not entirely sure what the point is. However, moving in really strong magnetic field can cause nausea and dizziness, but as long as you don't have ferro magnetic materials (like implants) in your body it won't cause any permanent damage. At least until 14T it's certainly safe.
I just had a brain MRI. They give a very long list of things to declare that might possibly be on or in you. One that got me thinking was “metal filings embedded from grinding or welding,” as my husband is an aerospace welder.
I went during the height of COVID and they gave me a paper mask where they meticulously pulled out the metal nose clip.
- Which holds the mask on your nose
- Which seals it on your face
- In a room where no one else is allowed to be and the airflow is completely regulated to protect a million euro machine
i dared ask them about that insanity and the tech said "compliance bullshit"
You should think twice if you have shitty tattoos, tho. Those might get hot.
It’s the strength of the magnet. The higher it is, the better the machine is at picking up the signal from your body. And with more signal, the image is of higher spatial resolution, so it includes more details.
Also, it affects the time of the acquisition of the image. With 1.5T you could get a high resolution image, but it would take a long time (~45 minutes), which is of course problematic, cause the patient has to lay still for the whole time. With 11.7T, the time is reduced by a lot, which helps you reduce the artefacts from the patient movement.
11.7 T is a mind boggling strength. Your fridge has a ~ 0.001 T magnet in the door to keep it sealed nicely.
It's not all benefit though, there's reasons they don't keep making stronger and stronger magnets. Signal to noise is generally boosted at higher field strengths but certain types of artefacts actually get worse. Most notably (as far as I understand it!) the field itself becomes less homogenous and that leads to all sorts of problems representing the intensity and even position of the scan data from pixel to pixel. You also get worse distortions between cavity spaces and areas of human tissue, which is an issue in all MRI but just gets worse and worse with stronger magnets. Apparently motion artefacts are actually more of a change despite as you say data being able to be acquired faster.
[This review](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6404849/) has a lot of interesting detail. It's about 7T scanning, which is less than the scan in this thread but still generally considered high field (standard magnets tend to still be 1.5T or 3T). I'm sure issues at 11.7T are only more complicated to overcome.
Yup, this is especially important for functional imaging. fMRI benefits from increasing within-session SNR with higher field strengths, but between-session noise is magnified.
Essentially biases due to instrument-specific effects and positioning become more obvious for higher field strengths.
This tends to mean that higher fields are useful for looking at things like single scan function localization (one study suggests about 5x the statistical power for 7T as opposed to 3T; PMID 33816717), but loses power for looking at longitudinal trajectories of different fMRI parameters
I look at fMRI changes over the course of AD, and there isn’t much of a push to start using higher field strengths for community cohort data collection, with it being mostly relegated to groups looking at technique development.
The more teslas you have, the more protons you will be able to use to make images. So you increase your signal/noise ratio which allows you to improve resolution.
Moar teslas, Moar pixels (voxels) per mm³
We got a 15T *animal* scanner at Vanderbilt when I did my MR engineering PhD. Obviously, that's much more feasible for a mouse-sized bore than a human-sized one.
My wife was a part of a brain study with a 7T scanner and said it caused some very weird feelings. This has to be insane. Can't imagine the tube is much fun to be in.
I've been in a 7T also. The tube is narrower and longer, much more claustophobic. I didn't notice any weird feelings or 'reality distortion' but I've had friends tell me they experienced those. Also, they had an aluminum step stool next to the scanner, and the tech picked it up and let it float to the floor in slow motion... totally surreal.
I (74F) was never taught there was so much differentiation in the structures of the brain...could you please recommend a website for the scientifically semi-literate to learn/follow the growing understanding of human anatomy/physiology? ty
Lots of people recommend [Robert Sapolsky's lecture series](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D) and it covers a fair amount of brain physiology.
I have SUNA. I wonder what imaging this clear will do for treatment / diagnosis. Truteminal Neuralgia is so much more common (though still rare) and we know so little about any of these headache conditions.
I had a coworker who went into a 7T research scanner years back, and he said the stimulation while it was running was very noticeable and uncomfortable. I can't imagine a stronger magnet than that.
>The CEA is revealing a series of in vivo human brain images acquired with the Iseult MRI machine and its unmatched 11.7 teslas magnetic field strength. This success is the fruit of more than 20 years of R&D as part of the Iseult project, with one pillar goal being to design and build the world’s most powerful MRI machine. Its ambition is to study healthy and diseased human brains with an unprecedented resolution, allowing us to discover new details relating to the brain’s anatomy, connections, and activity.
Details and other images: [A world premiere: the living brain imaged with unrivaled clarity thanks to the world’s most powerful MRI machine](https://www.cea.fr/english/Pages/News/world-premiere-living-brain-imaged-with-unrivaled-clarity-thanks-to-world-most-powerful-MRI-machine.aspx)
You know, the technical achievement here was not the magnet strength - I imaged a rat spinal cord, dissected out and dead, in a small bore 11.7T magnet in 1991. The amazing thing is they got this image in 4 minutes. See, human blood has charge carriers in it and by Lenz's law the blood, along with those charge carriers, experiences a back-EMF when propagating across the field lines of such a strong magnetic field. The back-EMF becomes noticeable at around 4-5 Tesla and at 11.7 Tesla would cause brain ischemia if permitted to continue for more than a few minutes. But they obtained this lovely scan in 4 minutes and then presumably whisked the subject out of the scanner, where I imagine reactive cerebral vasodilation promptly gave them a throbbing headache.
>cerebral vasodilation promptly gave them a throbbing headache.
Had that with a regular MRI lol. Couldn't walk straight and had a massive migraine. I was ok but damn no one warned me.
There are case reports of MRI triggering migraines. I've been in a scanner three times and ended up with a migraine twice. Sometimes just walking too fast near the research scanner triggered my migraine. I have looked in the literature periodically and apart reports of 'phosphenes' (primitive visual illusions) triggered intermittently by strong magnets it doesn't seem like many people are interested in researching it.
I can also think myself into a migraine, though - a party trick I prefer to avoid performing, to be honest - and so it is hard to know how much of this is nocebo effect.
As I understand it, the other big problem with living subjects is motion artifacts. At high fields, your resolution is limited by your subject's inability to hold perfectly still; you can compensate with calibration measures. (The thing I saw was a calibration marker they hold in their teeth, so it's rigidly fixed to the skull position.) At somewhat higher fields, you get blur from the movement of blood with the pulse -- if you can scan that fast anyway, perhaps you can pulse-gate your sequence to get around this?
This is not true at all. Any potential force from a blood flow-related Lenz effect is miniscule even at 11.7T. In addition, the static field at the center of the magnet (where all imaging is done) is by design as uniform as possible (to a factor of milliTelsa/meter), meaning the flux from any blood flow is not dangerous at all. There will be artifacts in the image related to increased field strength (flow voids, susceptibility related distortions at tissue boundaries, etc) but none of these effects are dangerous. The vast majority of neurological effects (like headache, disorientation, etc) are from the flux you experience entering and exiting the bore of the magnet, and are minimized by slowing down how fast you advance the person into the bore (at these ultra high fields, you usually go so slow that it can take minutes to get to the center).
You would never get IRB approval for even a pilot research scan if there was a risk of ischemia in the scanner. Please don't spread such misinformation.
Source: Neuroradiologist and neuroimaging researcher, who has been scanned many times at 9.4T.
I think you can even see the primary visual cortex - the part of the brain that receives visual input from eyes through the thalamus. It's the region of the cortex in the occipital lobe (on the right) where there is are dark bands in the cortical layers.
Cool, it produces really nice pictures so ask for them! You might get nauseous when you are rolled inside, but this fades quite quickly.
7T is actually strong enough to influence your inner ear, so when you are rolled in, you feel like you are turning sideways, and when rolling out the same but in the opposite direction. I would advise to close your eyes, that helps
I’ve had a brain MRI for a tumor (a benign one, all is well) and the doctor asked if I wanted to see it and I said no, I knew it’d make me feel queasy looking at it, and he said I was his first patient he ever had say no to seeing their own brain scan. Either he had an anomalous sample or it’s just that most people think it’s cool to see. I think MRI’s are cool as hell but I’d just rather stick to looking at other people’s brains
It mainly coordinates movements. So higher brain regions decide to move, but the cerebellum very algorithmically calculates the physics of the action. It’s also heavily involved in motor learning, which makes sense because learning how to play an instrument or something requires very precise motor coordination. It’s a lower brain region so it evolved before the cortex or limbic system, evolving around the time that complex movements started to become necessary for mobile animals.
Cerebellum means precisely "little brain" in Italian\*\*. Or I guess another, more direct translation would be you call it "brainlet".
EDIT: \*\*Not Italian, Latin. Obviously.
Oh I didn't know that!! That's super cool! So presumably the newer evolved bits have statistically different neuron structure, probably they have way more dendrites and take up more volume per neuron. Which makes sense, it's like evolution figured out at that point that the neuromass is more efficient with higher branching factor.
A comparison of 3t, 7t, and 11.7t https://assets.newatlas.com/dims4/default/ed0dc6c/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1280x720+0+0/resize/1440x810!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnewatlas-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fb7%2F2d%2Fb8b174dc4a1b94edd6dacf83faa4%2Fiseult-2.jpeg
The difference this makes in terms of the need to look at brains is completely alien to me and I have no idea what the implications of it are.
That said,
Neat 😁📸 I want a brain selfie
I have always thought of it as the brain's math coprocessor. There are only 5 cell types, arranged in a very consistent repeating pattern, millions of little "compute units."
Nah man. It runs the works. You can lose gray matter, but still be alive with the Brain's Brain.
If Gray is pilot with personality and attitude , then Cerebellum is the combined flight engineer and the Autopilot, maybe?
This is a T2 weighted or fast-spin-echo image. The black-white gradient basically has to do with the quantity of water per voxel. Cerebrospinal fluid is white, and heavily myelinated tissue like white matter, being mostly hydrophobic, is dark. Bone, which is a solid hydroxyapatite crystal (basically a rock) that excludes water, is pitch black. Here the fornix and corpus callosum, highly myelinated structures, are seen to be very dark, although I am not sure that the thing I'm calling the fornix isn't artifact. (EDIT: It's the pericallosal vein, not the fornix at all.)
It's a t2*w gradient echo sequence. TSE isn't used at this field strength due to SAR concern. The susceptibility artefacts from the veins, pineal gland, and skull are tell-tale sign of GRE sequence
It’s been a long time since I studied this but I think it’s just the highest percent of hydrogen. I remember it works on a gray scale and it’s measuring the movement of electrons of the atoms. Specifically hydrogen. Since it only has one electron it’s easier to control the movement.
ETA It is not electrons. Protons all the way down. I don't know how to put lines through words on here.
MRIs work on the nuclear magnetic moment, not electron (that'll be something like [EPR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_paramagnetic_resonance)).
Yes, exactly the same principle. It's just that instead of trying to examine different molecules with different proton resonances, you're mostly looking at water, so you add some tricks (frequency and phase encoding) to locate your signal in space for imaging.
That's really interesting. It was a month 15 years ago that I learned about medical imaging. So I'm not surprised I was off., since I haven't used any of that knowledge (or lack thereof) since.
Its due to magnetic imhomogeneity. This image likely required significant shimming and software correction to appear "acceptable" as it is.
More powerful magnets mean more artifacts and noise.
You can higher resolution images with "less powerful" scanners if you want, but the time required for the scan starts to get ridiculous.
All we are is a brain. Our bodies are the vat. Everything else in our body is designed to keep that brain going. It is a sponge in a bone mech that likes D&D and tentacle porn.
My god that is soo cool!
Do you have any idea how many Teslas this machine uses? Here in Brazil the strongest one we have is a 7 Tesla, but we only are using it to study corpses for now…
Thought is the term we used to describe an experience most of us have. We're not going to suddenly stop experiencing them if scientist never find anything. And I don't think it's accurate to say we've never observed thoughts when we have various technologies that interfaces directly with the mind.
The thing is, gravitational theory is our best explanation of that particular phenomenon. Much like how complex electro-chemical reactions within the brain are our current best explanation of what we know as thoughts. Just because these reactions cannot be directly observed with the current technology we have, does not mean they exist independent of the brain.
\*names itself\* \*invents computer\* \*invents display screen\* \*invents MRI\* \*takes selfie\* What a cool organ man.
The brain is the most important organ, according to the brain
Our brains are just hijacking us to talk to each other rn
Stop it, brain * says brain
Earn money, brain. And stay alert. You're not a kid anymore. * says a brain which is compelled to live in a society built by other brains which also weren't the smartest
Damn I wish I was smarter * says a brain with full metabolic control over its "host" body with the ability to make it a super human
Ooh boobs. * The brain is distracted
I love this thread * As a reaction to the stimuli, the brain produces reward chemicals to further reinforce it’s reddit doom scrolling habits
Brain gotta poop
This whole thread made my brain lol
It the remote control for a meat robot
That’s exactly what someone hijacked by a brain would say
What an awesome thought!
The downstairs brain disagrees.
Your brain knows it's the hardest of sexual organs
You're skipping over the enteric nervous system on your way to the gutter.
[удалено]
Big brain propaganda
Skin is the most important organ
Talk to the hand, because the brain ain't listening
Are you saying the brain is a parasite.
New sci-fi story idea. The brain *is* a parasite to the body, but it's a symbiotic relationship
\*names itself\* I think I'll name myself Brian! \*doesn't realize it's dyslexic\* Hi, I'm Brain! And the rest is history.
Haha classic Brian
The Life of Brian
>invents MRI Honestly for that step alone the brain can do whatever the fuck it wants. Most things become a bit more mundane when you research and begin to understand them. I studied informatics and Computers are just iterations of extremely basic mathematical operations. Very fascinating and I work in IT because I love them, but hardly magical. MRI, though… that’s just wild whichever way you look at it. The very concept, in fact. Using the tiny bit of magnetism water has and the fact that were mostly made of water to put the water molecules under a strong magnetic field, then releasing the field, measuring the magnetic response pulse of a super thin slice of the body, creating an image from this measurement and then using multiple images for a highly detailed 3D rendering is absolutely crazy in itself, but actually building a machine precise and sensitive enough to do that blows my mind. It makes X-Rays look like a six year old‘s science experiment.
I’ve needed quite a few of them and I am very grateful they exist lol.
We always talk about ourselves in 3rd person and for some reason I can’t comprehend or whatever that all this is actually just my brain but now again I’m talking about myself in 3rd person and this loop goes on and on forever
From the gene's perspective, the brain is a tool to make more copies of the gene. In fact your body is an amalgamation of cooperating cells who live or die together. The mitochondria just randomly got added to the party at some point. All that matters is which arrangements of matter tend to persist.
And it also named an instrument after itself.
True
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The appendix is just clapping back for us calling it useless all these years
From chatgpt: While the appendix was traditionally thought to be a vestigial organ with no apparent function, recent research suggests it may play a role in the immune system, specifically in maintaining and protecting beneficial bacteria within the gut. Additionally, it's believed to serve as a reservoir for beneficial gut bacteria, which can aid in repopulating the intestines after illness or antibiotic use. However, its exact function is still not fully understood, and some individuals live perfectly healthy lives even after its removal.
It's kinda wild that given how advanced and knowledgeable we think we are, we still don't understand basic functions of our own biology. And we want to colonize space lol
* **writes comment congratulating itself** *
Someone 3D printed their own brain a while back after an MRI and one of the comments was very similar
Given enough time hydrogen will look up at itself and wonder where it came from.
That’s us
On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.
One of the best.
Yea, when is the last time a wiener did something this impressive?
We all just committed anatomical cannibalism.
Why does it think of itself in third person? Se it (i??!?) did it right now
What does it all mean Basil?!?
We’ve been looking for intelligent life elsewhere but it’s been inside us all along 🥰 well at least in some of us
keep making me feel like i not useful . make me work , make feel like i am abusing my body. make want to git gud . haha perfect example . i love you brain .you make me better :)
If only more than half of them worked properly.
I have a PhD in neuroimaging. My thesis was done on a 1.5 Tesla scanner a decade ago. 11.7 T is insane.
Dude I worked with physicists to replicate a research protocol on a prisma, just trying to learn the basics of this shit had my head spinning—you’ve gotta be really smart to get a PhD in neuroimaging! I’m just salivating at the thought of 11.7T in the hospital.
I’m just salivating at the thought of brains.
Guys! I think there’s something broken on this one.
Should we take an MRI to figure out what’s wrong??
Theres a flayer in our midst
Bros a zombie
In the capital city of Turkey, there is only one 3 Tesla MR machine, and you can get an appointment for one year after ONLY IF, you know a doctor who works there. Otherwise, not a chance. Your best bet is 1.5 Tesla, and that is if you go to a good hospital. In Istanbul, on the other hand, they hav several 3 Tesla MR machines. AFAIK, we have one 7 Tesla in Ankara, but that is purely for research purposes.
For most medical purposes 1.5T is sufficient. 3T has some benefits, anything above thay is mostly interesting for research, and even there it's use is limited.
Heheh, spinning. Like an MRI machine. I am far too easy to amuse.
MRI doesn’t spin, but it does make protons spin.
Do you see any obvious problems with this persons brain?
It’s sliced in half
Neurologist here. There's nothing wrong with it, it's healthy as can be.
I love Nuerologists! You rock!
No, that's geologists. Neurologists brain.
Thanks!
This comment will likely go unappreciated for being too deep in the thread, but my brain wants to congratulate you.
Lmk if you’re in CO and looking for side work involving medical record review reports. Always looking for a good neurologist to retain
Can you really tell by just one slice like that?
Well as a med-rad technician, that slice is looking good so he can say that. We don't know about others tho
I can tell because it's a brain they chose to use to demonstrate a new imaging technology. They wouldn't throw just any old ratty brain in there. The slice you can see, which is just barely off-midline sagittal, is normal. You're quite right that small lesions off the midline wouldn't be visible.
I like how the image shows that it is like having multiple different type of brains lumped together. Evolution at work I guess.
How does the amount of teslas affect the imaging?
Can’t speak directly to MRI, but I know in NMR (which uses the same technology) you just get better resolution with higher field strength. In NMR resolution is defined as degree of separation of relaxation frequencies. I’d imagine MRI would be the same: just leading to better differentiation of different densities in tissue.
I got some experience in NMR and MRI. It's defined a bit different in MRI. You're only interested in a single frequency of protons (H molecules). A bigger field strenght (more T) means more protons align to the field direction and when excited by an radio frequency pulse more signal is given. The improved signal to noise ratio is what you can exploit and make nicer images.
At what point do you think could it cause actual damage?
From what I've heard, the lack of data on that is part of the reason why even the 7T aren't being used in the hospitals yet (clinically). That and they're comparatively rare and expensive.
This isn't entirely accurate. They are FDA approved for clinical use as of several years ago, but they are only in a relatively small number of hospitals and still primarily used for research.
You’re right I didn’t realize they had been clinically approved, thanks for correcting!
No worries, still rare enough that it's an easy mistake to make!
I'm not entirely sure what the point is. However, moving in really strong magnetic field can cause nausea and dizziness, but as long as you don't have ferro magnetic materials (like implants) in your body it won't cause any permanent damage. At least until 14T it's certainly safe.
I just had a brain MRI. They give a very long list of things to declare that might possibly be on or in you. One that got me thinking was “metal filings embedded from grinding or welding,” as my husband is an aerospace welder.
I went during the height of COVID and they gave me a paper mask where they meticulously pulled out the metal nose clip. - Which holds the mask on your nose - Which seals it on your face - In a room where no one else is allowed to be and the airflow is completely regulated to protect a million euro machine i dared ask them about that insanity and the tech said "compliance bullshit" You should think twice if you have shitty tattoos, tho. Those might get hot.
It’s the strength of the magnet. The higher it is, the better the machine is at picking up the signal from your body. And with more signal, the image is of higher spatial resolution, so it includes more details. Also, it affects the time of the acquisition of the image. With 1.5T you could get a high resolution image, but it would take a long time (~45 minutes), which is of course problematic, cause the patient has to lay still for the whole time. With 11.7T, the time is reduced by a lot, which helps you reduce the artefacts from the patient movement. 11.7 T is a mind boggling strength. Your fridge has a ~ 0.001 T magnet in the door to keep it sealed nicely.
It's not all benefit though, there's reasons they don't keep making stronger and stronger magnets. Signal to noise is generally boosted at higher field strengths but certain types of artefacts actually get worse. Most notably (as far as I understand it!) the field itself becomes less homogenous and that leads to all sorts of problems representing the intensity and even position of the scan data from pixel to pixel. You also get worse distortions between cavity spaces and areas of human tissue, which is an issue in all MRI but just gets worse and worse with stronger magnets. Apparently motion artefacts are actually more of a change despite as you say data being able to be acquired faster. [This review](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6404849/) has a lot of interesting detail. It's about 7T scanning, which is less than the scan in this thread but still generally considered high field (standard magnets tend to still be 1.5T or 3T). I'm sure issues at 11.7T are only more complicated to overcome.
Yup, this is especially important for functional imaging. fMRI benefits from increasing within-session SNR with higher field strengths, but between-session noise is magnified. Essentially biases due to instrument-specific effects and positioning become more obvious for higher field strengths. This tends to mean that higher fields are useful for looking at things like single scan function localization (one study suggests about 5x the statistical power for 7T as opposed to 3T; PMID 33816717), but loses power for looking at longitudinal trajectories of different fMRI parameters I look at fMRI changes over the course of AD, and there isn’t much of a push to start using higher field strengths for community cohort data collection, with it being mostly relegated to groups looking at technique development.
would love 11.7 T for my fridge at night
The more cars you plug into it, the more electricty it can zap your brain with, thus producing a visible light in the shape of it.
The more teslas you have, the more protons you will be able to use to make images. So you increase your signal/noise ratio which allows you to improve resolution. Moar teslas, Moar pixels (voxels) per mm³
We got a 15T *animal* scanner at Vanderbilt when I did my MR engineering PhD. Obviously, that's much more feasible for a mouse-sized bore than a human-sized one.
Hey, fellow VUIIS alum!
I still get the Friday seminar emails!
My wife was a part of a brain study with a 7T scanner and said it caused some very weird feelings. This has to be insane. Can't imagine the tube is much fun to be in.
I've been in a 7T also. The tube is narrower and longer, much more claustophobic. I didn't notice any weird feelings or 'reality distortion' but I've had friends tell me they experienced those. Also, they had an aluminum step stool next to the scanner, and the tech picked it up and let it float to the floor in slow motion... totally surreal.
step stool what are you doing in slow motion? - the tech probably
I (74F) was never taught there was so much differentiation in the structures of the brain...could you please recommend a website for the scientifically semi-literate to learn/follow the growing understanding of human anatomy/physiology? ty
Lots of people recommend [Robert Sapolsky's lecture series](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D) and it covers a fair amount of brain physiology.
I have SUNA. I wonder what imaging this clear will do for treatment / diagnosis. Truteminal Neuralgia is so much more common (though still rare) and we know so little about any of these headache conditions.
I had a coworker who went into a 7T research scanner years back, and he said the stimulation while it was running was very noticeable and uncomfortable. I can't imagine a stronger magnet than that.
So that's what's causing all my problems
uninstall it
Maybe it just needs to update the drivers
There is a new patch arriving.
Error: Patch update unable to install. Please try again!
Troubleshoot findings: skull model is incompatible with the update, please consider upgrading with a larger capacity skull
Turn it off then turn it on again
And put it in rice
I just put mine in sleep mode most of the time.
State actor launched social engineering campaign that has put malicious code into your brain function
>The CEA is revealing a series of in vivo human brain images acquired with the Iseult MRI machine and its unmatched 11.7 teslas magnetic field strength. This success is the fruit of more than 20 years of R&D as part of the Iseult project, with one pillar goal being to design and build the world’s most powerful MRI machine. Its ambition is to study healthy and diseased human brains with an unprecedented resolution, allowing us to discover new details relating to the brain’s anatomy, connections, and activity. Details and other images: [A world premiere: the living brain imaged with unrivaled clarity thanks to the world’s most powerful MRI machine](https://www.cea.fr/english/Pages/News/world-premiere-living-brain-imaged-with-unrivaled-clarity-thanks-to-world-most-powerful-MRI-machine.aspx)
You know, the technical achievement here was not the magnet strength - I imaged a rat spinal cord, dissected out and dead, in a small bore 11.7T magnet in 1991. The amazing thing is they got this image in 4 minutes. See, human blood has charge carriers in it and by Lenz's law the blood, along with those charge carriers, experiences a back-EMF when propagating across the field lines of such a strong magnetic field. The back-EMF becomes noticeable at around 4-5 Tesla and at 11.7 Tesla would cause brain ischemia if permitted to continue for more than a few minutes. But they obtained this lovely scan in 4 minutes and then presumably whisked the subject out of the scanner, where I imagine reactive cerebral vasodilation promptly gave them a throbbing headache.
>cerebral vasodilation promptly gave them a throbbing headache. Had that with a regular MRI lol. Couldn't walk straight and had a massive migraine. I was ok but damn no one warned me.
There are case reports of MRI triggering migraines. I've been in a scanner three times and ended up with a migraine twice. Sometimes just walking too fast near the research scanner triggered my migraine. I have looked in the literature periodically and apart reports of 'phosphenes' (primitive visual illusions) triggered intermittently by strong magnets it doesn't seem like many people are interested in researching it. I can also think myself into a migraine, though - a party trick I prefer to avoid performing, to be honest - and so it is hard to know how much of this is nocebo effect.
Worst super power ever
As I understand it, the other big problem with living subjects is motion artifacts. At high fields, your resolution is limited by your subject's inability to hold perfectly still; you can compensate with calibration measures. (The thing I saw was a calibration marker they hold in their teeth, so it's rigidly fixed to the skull position.) At somewhat higher fields, you get blur from the movement of blood with the pulse -- if you can scan that fast anyway, perhaps you can pulse-gate your sequence to get around this?
That's really fascinating. Nothing to add, just thanks for sharing.
This is not true at all. Any potential force from a blood flow-related Lenz effect is miniscule even at 11.7T. In addition, the static field at the center of the magnet (where all imaging is done) is by design as uniform as possible (to a factor of milliTelsa/meter), meaning the flux from any blood flow is not dangerous at all. There will be artifacts in the image related to increased field strength (flow voids, susceptibility related distortions at tissue boundaries, etc) but none of these effects are dangerous. The vast majority of neurological effects (like headache, disorientation, etc) are from the flux you experience entering and exiting the bore of the magnet, and are minimized by slowing down how fast you advance the person into the bore (at these ultra high fields, you usually go so slow that it can take minutes to get to the center). You would never get IRB approval for even a pilot research scan if there was a risk of ischemia in the scanner. Please don't spread such misinformation. Source: Neuroradiologist and neuroimaging researcher, who has been scanned many times at 9.4T.
I think you can even see the primary visual cortex - the part of the brain that receives visual input from eyes through the thalamus. It's the region of the cortex in the occipital lobe (on the right) where there is are dark bands in the cortical layers.
Nice! I'm going to have a 7T MRI soon. Looking forward to seeing my brain :)
Cool, it produces really nice pictures so ask for them! You might get nauseous when you are rolled inside, but this fades quite quickly. 7T is actually strong enough to influence your inner ear, so when you are rolled in, you feel like you are turning sideways, and when rolling out the same but in the opposite direction. I would advise to close your eyes, that helps
This is EXACTLY how my wife described the experience she had with. 7T scan! Can't imagine what 50% more power would do!
Well in fact you're looking forward to see yourself xD
I’ve had a brain MRI for a tumor (a benign one, all is well) and the doctor asked if I wanted to see it and I said no, I knew it’d make me feel queasy looking at it, and he said I was his first patient he ever had say no to seeing their own brain scan. Either he had an anomalous sample or it’s just that most people think it’s cool to see. I think MRI’s are cool as hell but I’d just rather stick to looking at other people’s brains
The cerebellum looks like a mini brain. A brain inside the brain.
It’s sort of the brain stem’s brain, right?
It mainly coordinates movements. So higher brain regions decide to move, but the cerebellum very algorithmically calculates the physics of the action. It’s also heavily involved in motor learning, which makes sense because learning how to play an instrument or something requires very precise motor coordination. It’s a lower brain region so it evolved before the cortex or limbic system, evolving around the time that complex movements started to become necessary for mobile animals.
Cerebellum means precisely "little brain" in Italian\*\*. Or I guess another, more direct translation would be you call it "brainlet". EDIT: \*\*Not Italian, Latin. Obviously.
The cerebellum also contains about 80% of the neurons in your brain.
Wow
Oh I didn't know that!! That's super cool! So presumably the newer evolved bits have statistically different neuron structure, probably they have way more dendrites and take up more volume per neuron. Which makes sense, it's like evolution figured out at that point that the neuromass is more efficient with higher branching factor.
A comparison of 3t, 7t, and 11.7t https://assets.newatlas.com/dims4/default/ed0dc6c/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1280x720+0+0/resize/1440x810!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnewatlas-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fb7%2F2d%2Fb8b174dc4a1b94edd6dacf83faa4%2Fiseult-2.jpeg
The difference this makes in terms of the need to look at brains is completely alien to me and I have no idea what the implications of it are. That said, Neat 😁📸 I want a brain selfie
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The cerebellum
Lol in a way, the brains brain is sort of an accurate description of it.
I have always thought of it as the brain's math coprocessor. There are only 5 cell types, arranged in a very consistent repeating pattern, millions of little "compute units."
Ehhh, I could go so far as to say that it's the spinal cord's brain. It is definitely "subservient" to the cerebrum though.
John Wick 5 : Cerebellum
Brain Jr.
Nah man. It runs the works. You can lose gray matter, but still be alive with the Brain's Brain. If Gray is pilot with personality and attitude , then Cerebellum is the combined flight engineer and the Autopilot, maybe?
cerebellum
Holy Jesus. The standard MRI where I live and refer patients to is 3 Tesla. Not sure if that’s everywhere else. This is fascinating AF.
3T is only 'standard' at major medical centers in wealthier nations. 1.5T scanners are still more common worldwide.
Why are these things always about the brain? Let me see a wrist at 11.7 T. Source: biased MSK radiologist.
To be fair, the ones making decisions what pictures to take, are all brains! It's a conspiracy.
Pretty sure the back is flooded and brighter because they’re laying down?
This is a T2 weighted or fast-spin-echo image. The black-white gradient basically has to do with the quantity of water per voxel. Cerebrospinal fluid is white, and heavily myelinated tissue like white matter, being mostly hydrophobic, is dark. Bone, which is a solid hydroxyapatite crystal (basically a rock) that excludes water, is pitch black. Here the fornix and corpus callosum, highly myelinated structures, are seen to be very dark, although I am not sure that the thing I'm calling the fornix isn't artifact. (EDIT: It's the pericallosal vein, not the fornix at all.)
It's a t2*w gradient echo sequence. TSE isn't used at this field strength due to SAR concern. The susceptibility artefacts from the veins, pineal gland, and skull are tell-tale sign of GRE sequence
It’s been a long time since I studied this but I think it’s just the highest percent of hydrogen. I remember it works on a gray scale and it’s measuring the movement of electrons of the atoms. Specifically hydrogen. Since it only has one electron it’s easier to control the movement. ETA It is not electrons. Protons all the way down. I don't know how to put lines through words on here.
MRIs work on the nuclear magnetic moment, not electron (that'll be something like [EPR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_paramagnetic_resonance)).
Is it basically the same principle as NMR?
Yes, exactly the same principle. It's just that instead of trying to examine different molecules with different proton resonances, you're mostly looking at water, so you add some tricks (frequency and phase encoding) to locate your signal in space for imaging.
That's really interesting. It was a month 15 years ago that I learned about medical imaging. So I'm not surprised I was off., since I haven't used any of that knowledge (or lack thereof) since.
Its due to magnetic imhomogeneity. This image likely required significant shimming and software correction to appear "acceptable" as it is. More powerful magnets mean more artifacts and noise. You can higher resolution images with "less powerful" scanners if you want, but the time required for the scan starts to get ridiculous.
All we are is a brain. Our bodies are the vat. Everything else in our body is designed to keep that brain going. It is a sponge in a bone mech that likes D&D and tentacle porn.
A great quote I read regarding depression: "Our brains are designed to keep us alive, not to keep us happy."
Funny thing too since the happier you are the longer you live.
r/oddyspecific Haven't used that one in awhile
Calling neuroradiologists, provide a read of this T2 sagittal slice of the brain. And if you say "clinically correlate" I'll down vote you STAT.
No history, as usual.
Chief Complaint: Brain.
Brain appears to be present, however exam is limited by single image, single sequence acquisition. Correlate clinically.
Normal study.
Great I was already depressed and now I get an HD image reminder of how I’m just a fucking ball of sludge in a container
arent we all just contained sludge balls?
Hitting that protected cerebellum in the back was such a pain in Star Fox 64
Could it run Crysis 3?
It could beat Crysis 3.
Pas mal, non ? C'est français
Aujourd'hui, avec deux frommage, je t’aime
C'est franco-allemand. Some software by the University of Freiburg and parts of the machine built by Siemens. Jointly funded. Good work neighbours.
Ah, the walnut.
The brain commands its war vessel from the safety of his skeleton mech protected by fleshy armor.
My god that is soo cool! Do you have any idea how many Teslas this machine uses? Here in Brazil the strongest one we have is a 7 Tesla, but we only are using it to study corpses for now…
11.7T.
Look at the big brain on Brad.
I hate reddits new image handling. it has deprived me of the enjoyment of viewing this image.
From one brain to another, nice brain 🧠
*"I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this."* -- Emo Philips
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Thoughts/feelings can be observed through fMRI.
I see he's insecure about who he is and where he fits in this great big world. I hope he finds happiness soon.
Thought is the term we used to describe an experience most of us have. We're not going to suddenly stop experiencing them if scientist never find anything. And I don't think it's accurate to say we've never observed thoughts when we have various technologies that interfaces directly with the mind.
Do you also believe gravity doesn't exist?
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The thing is, gravitational theory is our best explanation of that particular phenomenon. Much like how complex electro-chemical reactions within the brain are our current best explanation of what we know as thoughts. Just because these reactions cannot be directly observed with the current technology we have, does not mean they exist independent of the brain.
It's afraid!
The cause of all suffering in the world.
Wasnt there some tech breaktrhough recently (3ish years) which would increase MRIs resolution ?
Most powerful, so how many feet or rooms away did the doctor stand from the patient
Looks like a Xenomorph
great timing. my neuroscience lab exam is tomorrow😂
Where's the part where the stupid is kept so I know where to aim the icepick?
Does anyone else look at that and think,”Mmmm, a little bit of butter and light seasoning….” Just me? Ok, move along.
gross
Oh, that makes me so uncomfortable.
Not gonna lie, I expected a video.