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" Can metal really get inside your brain without you noticing? This week, Dr. Bishop&amp;#039;s guinea pig is Roy, a man plagued by pre-cognitions of Pattern-related atrocities. Roy has a bit of trouble in the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine: Once inside, his veins begin to protrude from his skin, looking as though they&amp;#039;ll explode if exposure continues. Unfortunately for Roy, he spent his high school years participating in Dr. Bishop&amp;#039;s science experiments. Bishop surmised that the result of those mysterious tests was metallic compounds in Roy&amp;#039;s brain and bloodstream. (MRIs use huge magnets to create images. If any metal is left in a room with an MRI, it&amp;#039;s usually bad news for the patient: The magnets will pull any piece of metal, big or small, into the machine). Metal compounds can definitely accumulate in the brain, generally from toxic exposure, says Dr. Mark Milstein, a neurologist and assistant professor of neurology at a major New York City hospital. There have been instances, for example, when metal welders developed an accumulation of manganese in their brains. According to Milstein, such accumulation may result in abnormal movement disorders or dementia, but often, it&amp;#039;s asymptomatic.  That&amp;#039;s where Fringe&amp;#039;s facts end. In the show, the metal in Roy&amp;#039;s bloodstream multiplied over the years, either by environmental factors or diet. In reality, unless Roy had continued exposure, there&amp;#039;s no way this scenario could happen. Metal just doesn&amp;#039;t grow or multiply within your body. Can you really navigate someone&amp;#039;s brain while they&amp;#039;re awake? The quick answer to this question is &amp;quot;yes.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;There are some [brain] surgeries done with patients partially conscious, in order to insure that important areas of the brain are not inadvertently damaged during an operation on the brain,&amp;quot; says Dr. Mark Milstein. &amp;quot;The truth gets twisted after this.&amp;quot; In order to access Roy&amp;#039;s visions, Dr. Bishop uses a magnetic neuro stimulator to operate on his brain\u00D1while Roy is conscious. Bishop moves the clusters of metal from the visual centers of Roy&amp;#039;s brain to the regions that process sound. In the end, Roy doesn&amp;#039;t see his visions anymore. Instead, he speaks them.  Dr. Bishop shows Roy a picture of a horse and a picture of a car, and as Roy processes the images, sometimes he&amp;#039;ll call them out (&amp;quot;horse!&amp;quot;) or sometimes another cortex will take over (&amp;quot;I taste gasoline!&amp;quot;). According to Milstein, if you show an awake patient a picture of a horse, he will always name it as long as he is capable of recognizing the picture. &amp;quot;A patient may hear a funny noise if you stimulate the auditory cortex, but he will still say &amp;#039;horse&amp;#039; if that is the picture he sees.&amp;quot; Most direct stimulation of the brain results in poorly defined responses, such as one&amp;#039;s arm jerking when the motor cortex is stimulated, or flashes of color when the visual cortex is stimulated. The detailed responses depicted on the show, says Milstein, just don&amp;#039;t happen.   RELATED STORIES * PLUS: Fringe Gets Fast Aging and Frozen Optics Wrong  * HOLLYWOOD SCI-FI VS. REALITY: Experts on Fringe Pilot  * DIGITAL HOLLYWOOD: New Movie F/X, Fall TV Sci-Fi &amp;amp;amp; More Fringe!   (Photograph by Patrick Harbon/FOX) "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/tv/a12186/4284506/>