Psychologist's 18-month study of his own brain reveals new relations between brain and body

Every Tuesday and Thursday morning for a year and a half, Russell Poldrack started off his day by climbing into an MRI machine and scanning his brain for 10 minutes. The self-experimentation has made the Stanford psychologist's brain the most studied in the world.
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Professor Poldrack, who began the work at the University of Texas and has continued it at Stanford, committed himself to the long-term study in order to expand the understanding of how different parts of the brain talk to each other, an organization known as the connectome, and how that behavior changes over time.

To bolster the results, Poldrack also fasted and drew blood on Tuesdays, which was analyzed to draw connections between brain function and gene expression. This step also showed definitive – and surprising – evidence of just how the brain reorganizes itself when it's low on coffee.

The results are published in Nature Communications.

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