What I did on my holiday

Well... on Saturday someone was looking up my bum with a camera, and on Monday I was filling out a ‘Geriatric Depression Questionnaire’ followed by having my brain scanned while someone laughed, cried and gasped.

When I was young it just seemed to be ice-creams at the beach... 

Still – tomorrow lies like an undefiled snowfield. I could watch TV. Or have an ice cream...

The new colonoscopy ward at The Royal Surrey is very impressive - a bit Star Trek.  Sadly the drugs were not quite as good as last time (when I was sure I could simply fly home afterwards), but Wetherspoon's have a beer festival on just now, so my son and I got happy enough anyway afterwards.

Monday's visit to the UCL Neuroscience department was as a volunteer for the project 'Age effects in the neural mechanisms supporting the processing of emotional vocalizations'. (Thought of using that as my title, but...nah). Basically - a way to have a good look at an fMRI scanner and get paid for it.  Lots of other tests and questionnaires, but also an hour in a scanner listening to human noises while my brain was mapped for activity - the theory being that regions of our brain react differently to screams, sighs and laughs as we age.  Interesting stuff, except my head is round like a football and we had a lot of trouble squeezing it in with earphones on.  Maybe your head gets bigger too as you age?  :-)  Anyway - nice people and I'll now look for the results.

(I have to say - you certainly wouldn't like to be inside a scanner for an hour if you're claustrophobic.)  

Oh - and I'll get a free photo of my brain scan too - nice.  I think it might be my new avatar. There - I've reduced an fMRI scanner to a twitter avatar generator.  Maybe that's how our minds work as we age?