our lab is in the process of acquiring a new mr-compatible eeg system. simultaneous eeg-fmri experiments to date have been, on the most part, hopeless, for a number of technical reasons i'm not going to go into, so this is no low risk investment. i'm actually quietly pessimistic about the whole endeavor, but (a) this has nothing to do with my thesis, and (b) it's not my money being spent. in an exact repeat of my first days in the ex-lab, hengyi sent me a gopher e-mail asking me to lend them my head, which meant a morning looking at the inside of the scanner bore and the rest of the day walking around with conductive paste in my hair. this turned out to be unexpectedly gratifying; pan-clinical was right after, and the first thing hilary said to me when we were done was that my hair looked really good. now, people who know me know that i don't really give a crap about styling my hair, so this was like george w. bush receiving a compliment about his penetrating insights into how to fight the global war on terror. i would have dismissed it as facetiousness, except that dr. sb said exactly the same thing a few hours later, and we all know about lightning and striking twice. there were a few mad moments of temptation, but i came home and washed my hair, and will not be spending several hundred dollars on gritty electolyte gel because (a) it costs several hundred dollars, (b) it's a really stupid idea, and (c) i have too many weaknesses already to add vanity to the bottom of the list.