Brainiac

I have reached a new, amazing level of nerdiness - and it rocks! While most people spend their Saturday nights at the movies or getting drunk in clubs or making out with their significant other, I spend my Saturday nights making valuable contributions to science. No, really - I do! Last night, at 19:00, I drove off to Wits Medical School to have my brain waves measured on an EEG machine.

The context of this is probably important. My friend Granville is also doing his BA Honours in Psychology. He's not a real BA student though - he's actually a BSc student, but you can only do psychology as a BA subject at Honours level, and thus he has crossed over to the dark side. He hasn't been deterred though, and thus his research project is seriously science-oriented - none of that "social constructivism- heteronormativity-tell me about your mother" stuff for him! He's a scientist at heart and really fascinated by brains, which is why his research project is based on how the brain interprets music and the extent to which it recognises sounds, harmonies, rhythms and metre as "music" rather than noise. He's also comparing how people with musical training , as opposed to people who have no musical training, experience music.

I have no musical training - I went for a year of keyboard lessons when I was 7 and my cousin tried to teach me to play the guitar when I was 15 (and that lasted about an hour). I can play "Chopsticks" on the piano and that is the sum total of my musical experience! Having explained my lack of musical background to Granville, I arrived at Med School, in the pouring rain, and wandered around the campus (with my cellphone, camera and wallet, might I add. Not a good move!) in the dark, looking for the physiology department. Granville finally came to find me, and we set off to the Sleep Lab. The lab is definitely not the usual sort of laboratory - instead of petri dishes and microscopes, there's a kitchen, bathroom, computers, the EEG, some couches and a coffee table and 4 rooms with beds! After some fighting with the computer, he ushered me into a room, where the EEG electrodes were set up. An EEG (electroencephalograph) essentially measures brain activity using electrodes attached to the scalp, which measure potential difference in the brain. An EEG reading shows brain waves, and EEG's are generally used to measure people's neural responses to stimuli (for more, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography). For my EEG, I had to sit on the bed (it is the Sleep Lab, after all!) while Granville rooted through my hair and measured the distance between my ears (apparently, I have funny ears. No comment.). Once having found the right spot by feeling my skull (a skill known as "phrenology", which was a forerunner to neurology and neuroscience and basically consisted of determining people's personalities by feeling their skulls), he removed the layer of dead skin cells on the spot on my scalp and then smeared some conductive gel onto the area, and then attached the electrode. This process was repeated over the rest of my head, and really required a lot of control on my part because I really wanted to giggle. There's just something about having a close friend digging through your hair and sticking electrodes to your scalp which really does something to a friendship. His complaints about my incredibly thick hair didn't help though!

Once all the electrodes were connected, he checked them on the EEG computer and then gave me a pair of headphones. The rest of the process required me to lie down on the bed, in the dark room, with the headphones on, and listen to the assorted pieces of music he played me. It took about 20 minutes and it was a lot of fun! It was really calming - in fact, I'd pay money to go lie in a dark room and listen to music! I was so relaxed that I could've fallen asleep - which sent Granville into a mild panic, because sleep brain wave patterns are different from wakeful brain waves!

After answering some questions about the music and then washing the gel off my head (I wasn't told about this prior to the experiment, and still had goo stuck in my hair this morning), I got to see the EEG recordings of my brain waves! I also got a chocolate muffin for my trouble and spent the rest of the evening chatting to Granville about brains and boys and stuff. It was an awesome evening - if a little unorthodox for a Saturday night!

Me, connected to the EEG machine (hair-styling by

Granville). Yes, I do have electrodes attached to my head!