I happen to think that magnetic resonance imagers, or MRIs, are one of the most incredible machines that humans have built -- right along side spacecraft and large hadron colliders. MRIs are volumetric imagers, which means that they can scan inside objects and produce very accurate three dimensional renderings of where certain protons are, like the protons in the two hydrogen atoms that make up each water molecule.

I confess that I didn't have a full appreciation for just how incredible MRIs are before taking an Advanced Brain Imaging class in graduate school, about six or seven years ago. Before hand I was largely only familiar with the common structural images that MRIs take, like the ones of my brain (above) often for diagnostic medical imaging like locating tumors or characterizing trauma. In cognitive neuroscience, we also made use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which is able to help identify the brain regions that are active when someone is completing particular tasks by measuring areas where there is increased blood oxygenation (the so-called BOLD signal). But it turns out that MRIs are capable of many more incredible methods of