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fMRI humor ar ar ar

Cory Doctorow at 11:17 pm Fri, Mar 6, 2009

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Here's some brain-scanning humor from the University of Western Ontario's Psych department site:
9. While pouring syrup on your Eggo waffles, you note that you missed a few voxels.

8. Your knowledge of brain anatomy exceeds your knowledge of geography. As in, "The transverse occipital sulcus intersects the intraparietal sulcus near the level of the parieto-occipital fissure" and "The Sahara is in Afghanistan, I think."...

5. Friends wonder how you can run a four million dollar scanner and still fail to program a VCR.

4. You suffer frequent left/right confusion and find yourself saying things like, "Make a left turn at the lights... No, I meant a *radiological* left!"

Top Ten Signs You've Been Scanning Too Much (via Beyond the Beyond

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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  • Shelby Davis

    Hilarious! The “Top Ten Similarities between Scanning and Sex” page was pretty funny too.

  • travelina

    I love medical humor like the Laryngospasms acappella group of CRNAs (Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists) singing “Breathe”:

    “Your sputum is as thick as –gee whiz
    I’m kissing my stipend goodbye!”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP2OuZ_vI_s

  • Takuan

    anyone rekamember thet Scienterrific Amurican article in the Amateur Scientist column? The basic science of nuclear magnetic resonance as a project doable for a talented kid in a basement?

  • Takuan

    http://www.scribd.com/doc/3481921/The-Amateur-Scientist-by-CLStong-Scientific-American

    pp 335+ , takes forever to load

  • Clemoh

    Yeesh.

  • bellamama

    @#4
    Oh, that’s nothing. After years of attending labor and delivery, I can eat cherry jello while delivering a placenta.

  • nanuq

    “3. At parties, you scope out people’s subject-worthiness: “It was great talking to you. Say, what are you doing Friday night?… Do you have any metal in your body?…”:

    I wonder how well it would work as a pickup line?

  • TroofSeeker

    I had a brain scan.
    They didn’t find anything. Wait- huh?

  • dculberson

    Nice try, Mortal! Scan me!

  • Roy Trumbull

    A friend of mine made the most obscure joke while being examined prior to cataract surgery. The computer used for measurements kept screwing up giving settings for the right eye when the left eye was being examined. So they would reboot and start all over again.
    His remark was, “I’m sorry your machine O.D.ed.”
    O.D. in optometry is oculus derecha or right eye.
    O.S. is oculus sinister or left eye.

  • Ranting Nerd

    Nanuq@#8 — it works great as a pickup line. I went to grad school with the person who maintains that page, and she did indeed get me into her scanner. (Must…resist…obvious…jokes….)

  • Takuan

    I always thought that was “dexter”?

    • Antinous / Moderator

      It’s ‘dexter’ and OU or oculus uterque for both eyes.

  • devophill

    @Takuan- I’m no doctor, but I think you may be right. Otherwise, they’d be mixing Spanish and Latin…

  • apoxia

    It’s all so true. I’ll have to pass this on to the fMRI in my lab, MRI is so hot right now.

  • Takuan

    next! hilarious practical MRI jokes! The old box-of-razor blades etc.

  • skeletoncityrepeater

    This is very funny even though I don’t know all the terminology. It reminds me of Douglas Adams’ humor for some reason, or shuld I say, humour.

  • J France

    It reminds me of nerds, in the best possible way.

  • treetop

    I guess it’s true.
    A mind *is* a terrible thing to waste.
    Let’s make a movie!

  • MarkHB

    Heh. My cohort Alex wrote a volume viewer a while back – I realised I’d gotten inured to looking at brains while noshing on a nice beef stew peering at someone’s medulla oblongata.

  • Anonymous

    What’s a VCR, granpa?

  • Ito Kagehisa

    I just think it’s funny that when Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging got good enough for use in commercial medicine, they dropped the “nuclear” prefix. It’s still an NMR machine in most other fields.