I’m interested in mapping out the structure of my brain over time. I’m wondering how I might go about this. Are there good at home brain scanners I can get? Could I go into a lab and have my brain scanned ever few months? I’m really clueless where to start with this. Any ideas? What would you do?
About my goals:
My goal is to see if my brain changes as I increase my frequency of lucid dreams through a specific brain training protocol (that I am also quantifying). I’m studying software development and will be studying machine learning later this year. I’d like to use my data to find any other correlations between my various self quantified data sets and my brain scans, extracted through machine learning.
Tracking changes to the structure of your brain as you age or as change your mental workload (see e.g. this study of London taxi and bus drivers) could be interesting!
You might find a refurbished MRI scanner on eBay for as little as $150,000
I once got a scan done for free by volunteering for a study…
What you can do at home is EEG readings with a device like one of Muse’s or Emotiv’s headbands. This could provide a (very noise) measure of the functioning of your brain.
Nice to see you “online” after meeting you so many years ago. After using the Emotiv, my team returned to Muse’s headbands after also experiencing quite noisy data. Are there practical alternatives you would recommend? Thanks!
Thanks everyone. I have muse but I don’t know if it can do what I want. I’ll check the other links, sorry for the late reply I thought I checked here and got no replies but somehow I missed these.
Unfortunately there are no home brain scanners. MRI machines are extremely expensive, which is why waiting times to have scans done can get long (even in large hospitals in wealthy cities). If they were ten-a-penny, you wouldn’t have to wait 3-6 months for a scan to see if your cancer is back - they’d just do them weekly.
If you want to track your brain architecture over time, I honestly think tracking your performance is a good proxy way of doing so. Try setting up some ways to quantify working memory, verbal fluency, productivity (so focus), and so on. If certain areas of cognitive performance develop rapidly, then you can be confident that the relevant area of the brain is undergoing some significant structural changes.
I hope that helps anyway. I wish I could link you to a nice, reliable, safe home brain scanner!
