Boxed – Things I learned after lying in an MRI machine for 30 hours
aethermug.com
aethermug.com
TIL this exists. Does anyone know where to read more about these plugs? What do they do? I always feel like I've got a harder time understanding people than everyone else
Generally they (claim to) try to sound more neutral so it's "just" a reduction in volume without much tone bias - personally I can't tell and haven't bothered to check, the small volume cut is all I really care about and any tone bias would be small enough that it's tough to notice anyway.
You can of course go much more specialized for many specific goals, but start cheap and simple. $20 or less is easy to find, though you might want to hunt around for comfort purposes (e.g. personally I only find completely soft ones comfortable for long periods, and anything with a long hard stem that pokes out gets bumped and seems like a safety hazard to me).
I've also taken to wearing them while driving at highway speeds with the windows down (feels good man) after noticing how the wind noise was damaging my left ear especially.
A minor warning: experiencing "silence" makes a lot of people uneasy - in my opinion it's just a matter of practice, but some find it so unpleasant that they would never use earplugs by choice.
If you want to spend more cash I find Senner brand my sweet spot (doesn't block that much, reasonable cost, reusable). Alpine for a bit cheaper option with wide range of "dB's", good for concerts or motorycle, single pair will last long time. Or Loops, a lot of hype for these ones (people claim it does precisely what you are looking for), but it's overpriced in my opinion, and blocks a bit too much sound for me (to use in office, home, but perfect for a bar, commute, cinema). Also doesn't work well in wind. All 3 of those brands give fairly natural music experience, especially Senner.
I write "silence", as it's never silent. You will hear many annoying things (hums, squeaks, high pitched noise, pulse, feet on the ground). This things sometimes get into your head and you can't stop thinking about them. That's also why googling people's experience with tinnitus (that usually has no physical reason - at all, or one that you can fix - and is constant) is the most depressing thing I did last couple of years - highly recommend not investigating that too far.
I remember riding a motorcycle with earplugs. (Uncertain if it is legal)
they were the 3m 33 db ones, and were the exact opposite of uneasy. Although I could hear things around me, the muting made the world quietly slide by, and I felt like I was in the center of an island of calm. It was very peaceful.
I suspect this is akin to driving a high-end car with NVH dialed into "ultra luxury silence", or sitting in the good seats of a jet where the sounds of the engines are far behind you and can't quite catch up.
In this ever more hectic world, I think silence (and freedom from other distractions) will be more and more a luxury.
In loud environments, I've definitely found the same phenomena, where it was much easier to understand people talking w/ the dB cut. I never thought this was a disorder, but rather a natural result of lowering the sound floor that made voices easier to pick up/distinguish?
It's easy to fall asleep inside, especially when they show videos of panda's eating via a tilted mirror they put above your eyes.
Since Active noise canceling technology works by emitting "opposite" frequency of what the mic just listened, its limited by the processing delay so it is only really efficient in filtering sounds that are constant in time.
Turns out most sounds you’d want to filter are meeting this criteria so that’s ok.
But for sounds that aren’t constant like voices it still works but less.
So it’s not a surprise that the technology helps you isolate voices.
Vision is different here in
With hindsight I'm not convinced about the informed consent re: the gadolinium infusion, but when you're lying prone in your underwear and the nurse is about to stick a line in your arm you don't feel particularly empowered...
[Apologies for the anecdote but] one (with hindsight) comedy moment was that they asked me/reminded me multiple times that no metal was allowed to be present but somehow neither they nor I clocked I was still wearing my wedding band ...
So I was lying there in the scanner and suddently I could feel the changes in the magnetic field via the ring on the ring finger of my left hand. A second or two of sheer panic as I wondered if I was about to see my finger get amputated and then I realised it was fine.
I should have known better, gold is diamagnetic.
[Decades ago] I spent my PhD years running my samples in various high-field NMRs. Nearly lost a set of house keys by taking them too close to a magnet, felt it trying to snatch them from me and managed to step away at the last minute....
That is a bad day at work.
He was quickly moving a conductive loop through a very strong magnetic field with a crazy large gradient.
(I'm not a physicist, but I assume that's the explanation for the burn.)
A gold ring is commonly 14k or 58.5% gold. You're lucky none of the other metals were magnetic. Sometimes nickel is included.
Alarm went off, security guards came running – and were also pulled in… In the end it took hours to get everybody out, the nurse and one or two of the security guards were injured, and the MRI machine was damaged.
Everyone I know who's worked with MRIs has been tempted to press the button!
> If a ferromagnetic object becomes stuck to the magnet, do not initiate a quench. Quenching will not necessarily release the object and can be extremely costly due to helium loss and potential system damage.
https://www.auntminnieeurope.com/medical-legal-and-practice/...
> The nurse had tucked a total of 13 metal weights into the pockets of the vest, and it was these weights that pulled him into the scanner.
Blood is diamagnetic or paramagnetic depending on the oxygenation, and fields stronger than 2T have been shown to have effects on neural activity, so who knows maybe he was right.
There was a period of time where I had to get several MRI scans done, and I found them strangely relaxing. I was chastised several times for falling asleep (like the author), but I couldn't help it. I wasn't looking at anything but the ceiling of the machine, though.
For shorter flights (1-2 hours) I usually fall asleep shortly after takeoff and wake up at landing. The a 320 neo I took recently actually felt too quiet to be relaxing.
This must exist, right?
“WebCollage is a program that creates collages out of random images found on the Web. More images are being added to the collage about once a minute, so this page will reload itself periodically. Clicking on one of the images in the collage will take you to the page on which it was found.
It finds the images by feeding random words into various search engines, and pulling images (or sections of images) out of the pages returned.
WebCollage also works as a screen saver on MacOS and Unix: it is included with the XScreenSaver package.”
The admins at jwz.org seem very mature.
The admin at jwz.org thinks the same thing about the typical HN commenter, so I suppose it all washes out.
The guy did willingly, for science, what for most people would be an unspeakable nightmare.
Thank you, Sir!
Most don’t find it that bad, and many enjoy it. It’s a bit like meditation, no one interferes and the drone of the scanner sends them to sleep. It’s warm and comfortable.
A significant number of first time patients have been told of the horrors of MRI and come pre-loaded with all sorts of misconceptions that helpful friends and family have passed on.
I’m an MR tech - we scan about 40-50 body regions per day and have 2 time slots for sedation (should it be needed). On average we would use light sedation 1 or 2 patients a day. I’ve been a volunteer for optimising a few sequences this month, and recommend it.
i thought i didn't have any phobia until i had a single experience with an MRI machine with no sedation. i came out with mild claustrophobia that only time has been healing.
The first one that I'm aware that was created was Daisy, as an homage to the IBM 704.
No, it is very much not beautiful. It's like being inside a pneumatic drill. Horrible experience.
IME, IMHO, etc.
The wrist experience was fine, I actually sat down with my hand inside of the extremely loud contraption.
The shoulder experience was a different matter entirely. I was in Vietnam during the pandemic, and injured my shoulder during a table tennis training session.
At the hospital they do the standard blood pressure/pulse routine, which went fine until the machine started beeping red, at which point the nurse arranged an emergency visit with a cardiologist as my standing heart rate was under 40 BPM.
I felt fine but the cardiologist said I had something called bradycardia, and was at risk of a massive coronary if I didn't take medication to speed up my heart rate.
I was understandably worried about my heart, but wanted to get my shoulder looked at, so into this long, thin spaceship-like tube I went...
and pretty much instantly freaked out :)
I pressed the panic button; a tech came in and said, "close your eyes before entering". That made all the difference, MRI went fine after that (well, despite how absurdly loud it is in there).
As for my heart, I've probably had this condition my whole life.
In the SF Bay Area, there’s a company called reboot floatation spa , where you can book time floating in body temperature epsom salts inside a box that blocks noise and light.
I also experienced intense visual imagery and extraordinary ability to concentrate on thoughts while my other senses were deprived. And then I got sleepy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bci68qKGrf8
"I met Jesus in an MRI machine"
Started early, over 15 years ago, way before 2018.
This is an artist whom we broadcast on a live show when I was on the radio.
Had no idea if he had anything on Youtube, thought it was worth checking :)
For those who didn't watch, TLDW he backslides . . .
I don’t know why, but I now find the sounds the machine makes comforting. I’ll often play YouTube videos of MRIs operating for background noise now and my partner thinks it’s super odd. She doesn’t find it pleasing at all, but I find it very pleasing. I find it soothing.
Longer version: https://leanpub.com/aphantasia/read