Or it could block the flow to the brain, causing a stroke.

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To study the neurology of tickling, Dr Blakemore and her team stuck volunteers into a magnetic-resonance-imaging machine (which monitors oxygen flow to the brain, and thus indicates the amount of activity in that organ's various parts).

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The regulation of that flow of ions is key to the working brain.

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The sheer volume of data involved in modelling the brain will itself lead to "radically new" IT with new computer technologies designed to manage the flow.

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