Donate your brain to science this weekend.

I know what you're thinking: "Easy for shenry to say, he doesn't have much to lose." You're right, but you're missing the point. Donating your brain is a selfless act that could very well benefit billions of people. As Spock put it in The Wrath of Khan, "…the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." You can't argue with Spock. So deal with it and go donate your brain.

And don't you dare ask if you can donate your brain postmortem. What good is that going to do? A dead brain can only be used for two things: (1) Anatomical dissection and (2) a good game of splurt. Don't kid yourself that your dead brain is special and unique with crazy fissures that define your never-diagnosed super-genius capacity. Your dead brain is just like everyone else's dead brain and nobody is going to gain anything by cutting it up. As for splurt, if you have test results indicating that your cranium has an abnormal amount of water retention then you might be able to justify donating your dead brain… the juicier the better when it comes to playing splurt.

I've already signed up for my brain donation. My brain is going to Dr. Benzi Kluger's Functional Neuroimaging of Volitional Action Using Magnetoencephalography and Funtional MRI study. I kid you not. I signed the subject consent form and took an Edinburgh Handedness Inventory this past Wednesday. My brain donation is scheduled for 3:00PM this afternoon. Here's an excerpt describing what my brain will be used for:

Project Description and Rationale: You are being asked to take part in a research study of what parts of the brain are important, and when they are involved in certain mental tasks. Specifically we are interested in studying which brain areas are involved in voluntary movements. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) are methods of measuring brain activation when doing these tasks. You are being asked to be in this study to help verify that various mental tasks involve discrete areas of the brain in healthy people.


It is shenright to donate your brain to science.
...and so it was written, shenry at 10/01/2004 01:45:00 PM.
...and so it was appended with .