Participated as a healthy volunteer for a schizophrenia study today and got my brain scanned by MEG and fMRI. In both, you're expected to lie very still so that images of magnetic activity and blood flow can be taken while you perform a simple cognitive task. The MEG is done in a magnetically shielded room, while the MRI is done in the tunnel in an electromagnet. I was commenting to the principal investigator that it must be challenging for the subjects with schizophrenia to deal with the potential claustrophobia, restrictions on movement, and the potential paranoia associated with having coils stuck to their heads. He concurred, saying that he has to get rid of maybe one in fifteen control scans for excessive movement, but with the schizophrenic subjects, the attrition proportion is more like one in five.

Wish I had pictures from today to show you, but the CD they gave me of my brain images is in some Unix executable file format that I can't read.