posted
Here is an email I sent out following an evening as a voluntary test subject:
The MRI was interesting, but stopped being fun rather quickly. The experimenter gave me earplugs and then put a sheet over me as I lay on the roll-y table. He put a squeezeball in my right hand and a box with two response buttons in my left, and taped both of those to the sheet so I couldn't drop them. He clamped pads on either side of my head so I couldn't move, and put a mirror on top of that so I could read what was upside-down on the screen behind my head. Then he rolled me into the machine.
Once he was back in the control room, he spoke to me by microphone and I responded with the squeezeball: "Okay, we're going to start with a quick four-second scan. If you're ready, squeeze the squeezeball." I squoze.
The scan is louder than I'd expected. It sounds like a copy machine would sound if you stuck your head inside its mechanism (not surprisingly). There are also some loud beeps. The second preliminary scan was nine minutes long. As that was happening, I was asked to read letter-number pairs on the screen (in the mirror) and use the two keys in my left hand to report whether the letter was a vowel or a consonant, or the number even or odd. For instance, first it would flash up on the screen "LETTER," and then "f9," so I would press the key under my index finger because f is a consonant. Then it might flash "NUMBER" and then "i7" and I would press the key under my middle finger because 7 is an odd number. There would be two of these challenges and then a pause which varied in length -- later in the experiment I learned to use the pause to rest my eyes, because it turned out that the mirror was positioned closer to my forehead than my eye level, and got VERY uncomfortable.
After a second four-second scan, we started the "functional" scans -- four scans of twenty minutes each ("If you're ready for the first twenty-minute scan, squeeze the squeezeball.")
By the middle of the second scan, my eyes hurt from looking up and from trying to focus on an image in the mirror (which was really three images because that's what mirrors do). I rested them by focusing between questions on the wall behind the machine or on the frame above my face or simply on the edge of the computer screen that the challenges were being displayed on. The problem with resting my eyes was that I sometimes looked back to the screen too late to catch whether it said LETTER or NUMBER, and then had to guess which one I was supposed to respond about.
Also during the second scan I became aware that my head was sore at the point where it touched the table. There was padding back there, but no amount of padding can make up for not being able to move for two hours. And just as bad was a pain that felt like it was in my jaw. I decided that it couldn't hurt the scan if I moved my jaw a little, but this turned out to do nothing to ease the pain. It wasn't until the experimenter opened up the machine that I discovered that that pain was from having my ears clamped to the sides of my head -- the experimenter seemed surprised by this: either nobody else experienced that pain, or I was the first to complain of it.
After the second scan I was offered a break: "If you'd like to take a break, squeeze the squeezeball." Squeeze. "Squeeze the squeezeball again when you're done with your break." Well, I didn't see the point of taking a break if I couldn't move. So on with the scans. At any time I could have squeezed the squeezeball and terminated the experiment, but then I would have forfeited my $50, proven myself weakwilled, and failed the experimenter (and cost MIT $500 for the use of the MRI). So I kept going, though the last two scans seemed interminable. I wanted to murder the experimenter, but when he finally opened the thing up and took the pressure off my head, I could have hugged him for saving me. The first words I said were, "Never again," but I was laughing.
posted
it's part of a series of experiments to see how much discomfort people will put up with for $50.
Posts: 3956 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Sounds like an experiment you would head up, celia. If you could keep the subjects alive, of course.
martha, did you tell them that you guessed on some of the answers because you had trouble focusing after a while? I don't know whether that's part of the experiment or whether they might tweak things in future trials to minimize that.
Posts: 4625 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
I'd also like to hear more about the reason for the experiment.
Glad you made it out alright. Was there a reason for not letting you out for a break? Were you unable to speak for some reason?
My husband does a lot of goofing off in the garage and we use earphones (earplugs, only for the entire ear, I forget the word. . . is it earphones?) and after a while, my jaw or the glands around my jaw hurt like heck! I'm surprised the experimenter was surprised. Did this test have anything to do with teaching the experimenter how to behave with patients in an MRI machine? Sounds like he/she could use some feedback!
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
Ear plugs fit into the ear. I've spent many days with them jammed in my ears standing by a pile driving hammer.
Posts: 4625 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Yeah, she wore earplugs, but she also had her "ears clamped to the sides of my head" which makes me think it was probably very much like wearing the headphone thingies we use out in the garage. Like these.Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
Or, in the process of restraining her head, her ears were smashed so tightly to her head that it was painful.
Posts: 5879 | Registered: Apr 2001
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