My Brain In My Hand

Background

I was in this reachers project at Shalgrenska, Gothenburg, Sweden, it was about, human interaction to touches.

I was basically a brush on the leg (nothing more, I promise). The reashearsers noted that with small babys (1-9 weeks old), the touch of the mother did not only activate the sense function in the brain, it also activated the emotional parts. Now, is it the same no matter what age you are in?

So I was asked if I could join, and be one of the test subjects, so to speak.

MRI(F) Scan for 40min

In order to measure the activity of the brain I was placed in a MRI scan and laid there still for 40 min. From time to time one of the reachers came in and brushed my bare leg. The hard thing about this was to not fall asleep. And the sound of the MIR scanner… It is so loud that you do need earplugs.

RAW Data and Request of an .STL file

After the scan I asked for all the data and if they could extract and make a .stl file of my brain. I knew that they had done it before. It took a couple of weeks, bet then I got the .stl file!

Here my brain in Fusion 360! So cool to se your own brain. It is like sky net gets selfe aware… 

Verify that It is my brain and not just some other LOW IQ humans!

During the scan I asked one of the reachers to take pictures on the Screen and on me, while I was in the MRI scanner. After I got the data I just checked the geometry of the slices picture of the brain and the 3D model at the same slicing point. And it was a match. A simple but good way to verify that it was my brain in the 3D model they sent.

SLS  (SWE: Selektiv Lasersintring) printing

What is SLS printing.

Well to keep it short think of a box full with powder, and then you have lase beams that melts the powder in to a fix hard plastic structure. So, the laser follows the geometry that in my case would be the the stl file of my brain. And the result is a 1 mm thick shell that is the brain, note that there is unused powder inside the closed geometry that has to be removed. There fore the technician at the company cuts a small hole and pour out the un used powder.

Now there is more to it than this, but still, this is the basics of SLS / SLA printing.

The company that helped me print out my brain is ADDEMA, Jönköping, Sweden. If you need any prototyping or cool stuff to be printed, I recommend that you talk to Addema.

Before I gave the file to Addema, I had to scale it down, the researchers told me that it is a scale of a factor 10 on the file. So I scaled it down, and measured the brain in fusion…

It was only 16.8cm wide, do I have such a small brain?

I measured my head and damn… My head is really small. It only 49 cm around and the brain is the correct size.

After I sent the file they started to print out two copies of my brain. And they thought that it was a cool thing and asked if they could use the brain to have as marketing and for fun. Sure, I mean its my brain there is now way anyone can cope it, I have the original on me at all time…