Bill, Thanks for sharing. I really enjoyed the pictures. Jen Dad w/ PD 55/39 -----Original Message----- From: Bill Innanen [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2000 10:11 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: EEG, fMRI vs. Bill the guinea pig [This story is also available at http://Bill.Innanen.com/photoalbum/000802/ with photos of the people, places and events.] Today was the big day - my turn as a Parkinson's guinea pig at Johns Hopkins Hospital. I arrived very early, both because I didn't know how long it would take me to drive there, and because I wanted to look around. 20 years ago I was there almost weekly, taking my wife in for chemotherapy. I wanted to see how things had changed. And had they ever changed! I was almost totally lost until I found the original hospital. Then I began to find familiar landmarks. Most of them had been remodeled or had new buildings built in front of them. And the whole complex was easily twice the size I remembered. And it's still growing. The low income housing complex across the street was almost totally gone. The last remaining high rise looks as if it is to be imploded sometime soon. At the appointed time, I met Christina at the appointed place. She gave me chits for the cafeteria and parking garage. I didn't have to do the laptop reaction test because I had don it for the Longitudinal Study a couple of months ago. Thus I started with lunch. The first stop was to get an EEG done. Fred Wolfe was the person for that. The first thing he did is to give me a quick Eye test. He then wired me up and put me in front of the "visual stimulator. This was a monitor with a checker board pattern. In the center of the screen he had stuck a "smiley face." I was to stare at the smiley while the background pattern flipped back and forth. He had some problems getting a good reference ground sensor. He tried several locations until he got one that satisfied his needs. By that time I had about a dozen leads attached - all with gooey contact gel. He said my impedance was not good in the other locations. I told him that I must either have a thick skull or be a member of the resistance. :) After that test was over, he put the "LED goggles" on me. For this one I kept my eyes closed and let the LED array in the goggles shine right through my eyelids. I didn't have to do anything except let it happen. That was by far the easiest test all day. But once he unhooked me I had goo all through my hair. The only satisfactory fix would have been to shampoo it out, but that wasn't in the cards. I just combed it and let it look as if I had been using the "greasy kid's stuff." Next we (Christina and I) set off for the Kennedy-Krieger Center for the fMRI portion of the test. I met the people who would be running the test. Renee Geckle was in charge. Terri Brawner would be running the equipment. Dr. Yousem stopped by to say hello. He's the Principle Investigator for all of this testing. I have only one photo of me in the fMRI machine, and it was taken by Renee from the door. Just entering the room would have probably scrambled my poor old digital camera. To put me into the machine, the cage-like device you see just above my head slides down over my head. Then the platform is raised and slid into the machine. For the first test there was a half silvered mirror attached at a 45 degree angle so I could see a projection screen that was at the far end of the tunnel. the little camera in the tunnel that kept watch on me looked right through it from the back side. First they did a structural scan to image my entire skull. Talk about noise! I was warned over and over about the noise level, as well as having earplugs. Those stepper motors were really howling as the moved the RF receiver arrays around. I swear that at times the dominant frequency was above 600 Hz. Fast little suckers! Then they started the functional testing with Renee running the show. For that they scanned the target areas over and over while the projection screen in my mirror showed the stimulus. I was to click a button on a box that I held as soon as a colored circle appeared. The circle had each of its quadrants a different color. (I never thought to ask if the coloring was significant.) We had one false start of the functional scan. The projector was showing a blue screen with the words "No Signal." Oops! Then came Christina's turn. I think I was the first to try it out. When she said "Ready... Go" with a variable pause, I was to do a little finger tapping exercise. Counting your index finger as 1 and your pinkie as 4, the pattern was 1,3,2,4,4,2,3,1. With each "1" to be a depression of the button. A little awkward until I got the pattern memorized. I also found a little "trick" that Christina liked and might use in future tests on others. The second part of the test was the same except that Christina's "Go" was missing. I had to wait an estimated 10 seconds after her "Ready" before I did the tap dance. The third phase was the same as the first - "Ready... Go." When I finished I was give a paper printout of my head sliced right down the midline. You can clearly see the corpus colosum and top end of my spinal cord. I was amused to see that it imaged my stuffed sinuses. And that was it. I think I spent about an hour in the machine. It was quite an experience. At no time was I ever even slightly uncomfortable. I made sure that everyone knew that I would volunteer for any other tests they might devise that I could qualify for. I limited my open acceptance in only one respect - I insist that I must have at least a 50 percent chance of survival! Bill -- Bill Innanen <mailto: [log in to unmask]> <http://Bill.Innanen.com> & <http://mni.ms>