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Asked by Keir to Ria, Rachel, Adrian, Iroise, Joe on 8 Nov 2016. This question was also asked by Reece.
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Iroise Dumontheil answered on 8 Nov 2016:
I study human brains, but alive, using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners. I ask my participants to lie down in the MRI scanner and the machine can take two main types of images, one type is called “structural” and it’s basically a high resolution picture of the anatomy of the person’s brain. The other one is called “functional” and shows where the blood goes in the brain when someone is doing a particular task (for example reading words), compared to another task (for example being shown a single letter). And our current understanding is that the blood goes where brain cells (neurons) are currently working hard at something.
MRI scanners are safe, they are basically a very large magnet. So there is no danger to our participants at all, except if they have metal in or on their body. Annoyingly for me, I study teenagers and a lot of them have braces, which means they cannot be scanned!
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Ria Vaportzis answered on 8 Nov 2016:
I test human participants only, but they are alive. For my research I don’t use brains of people who have passed away and donated their brains to science.
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Joe Bathelt answered on 9 Nov 2016:
Some scientists work with humans and others work for animals, and a few work with both. My research is in humans, because the particular thinking skills that I’m interested in are difficult to study in animals – it would be really difficult to find rats that can read and do arithmetic.
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Rachel Harris answered on 9 Nov 2016:
I use human brains that have been donated after a person has died.
I look at changes in the cells and proteins in the brain between people with Alzheimer’s disease and people without any disease.
I also use nerve cells from humans which we can grow in the lab to investigate what goes wrong in the disease.
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