I Did It For Science (...or Money)

(Originally published in the MIT Tech.)

I have a confession to make. I collect dresses. And when I say "collect," I mean I hoard dozens in my closet where I carefully arrange them by color. There is the sky linen shift for summer's hottest days, the cream lace flouncer for romantic dinners in the South End, the BCBG red chiffon ball gown I wear around my apartment for no reason at all - and I'm always on the lookout for new ones. But at a certain point, I came to an impasse: how to fund my habit?

Last spring I had a brilliant idea. I would sell myself to the venerable Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. And no tests are more lucrative, or more exciting, than getting scanned by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).

The first time I showed up for an MRI, I was instructed to change into drawstring-tied MC Hammer pants. The researcher looked me over and we began de-metallification.

"Nose stud?"

"OH! Yes, of course." I took it out and laid it on the counter.

"Red or orange tattoo?"

"Uhhh, no, it's all blue and white."

"Hair ties?"

I flung them, metal clips shining, on the table. "Okay, all set!"

"Wait," he said. "Bra underwire? Metal rings in underwear?"

My eyes widened, and I scuttled back to the changing room, shamefaced.

After coming out of the scan, the researchers gave me a parting gift: pictures of my brain, which I hung up in my office. They are a comforting reminder,not only that I HAVE brains, but late at night when I'm studying, hungry, they look like Ramen in a bowl.

Since then, I have become an MRI connoisseur. Some labs offer to give you socks to keep your tootsies warm; some put a cushion under your elbow; some have developed a jocular intercom manner. At my most recent scan, the UROP put a nice warm sheet over me - tucking me in with a blankie! - and I had an urge to chomp playfully at her fingers a la Ferris Bueller. My head was carefully arranged and I was reminded, as always, not to move. No crossing legs, no nodding, no itching your nostril. Then I was slid into the machine like a baguette into the oven.

The space is tiny; only a few inches to flex my fingers on each side. But I'm one of those weirdos who's actually claustrophilic. I like small spaces. I pretend I'm in my own escape pod, or trapped in a cave like Kristen Scott Thomas in The English Patient, scratching out my last words by dying firelight.

The first passes are braying background scans, which sound like a giant robotic goat giving birth. Then, while you're doing tasks on the screen - anything from tracking Hebrew letters to recognizing faces upside-down - the machine scans for activity in your brain, making a chopping noise that I like to think of as the ground beat of bad German techno, which is to say, German techno.

This morning, I came out of a scan and leaned over the console as a friend retrieved my files. She ran the cursor over a cross section and I saw my nose bones, brain stem, and even lobular membranes in high resolution. "You got a nice brain," she said, chewing gum. "Very symmetrical. No weird ventricles or anything." I was more pleased than if I'd been complimented on a new dress. Whoever says brains aren't sexy should see my corpus callosum.