A project that started as a collaboration between members of the Department of Psychology and artificial life researchers in the Machine Learning Department has been shut down following an incident on the program’s first pilot run.

“I really don’t know what happened,” said Dr. Tim Verstynen, the lead researcher on the project in Psychology. “In trying to move away from all the zombie neuroscience nonsense, I wanted to get back to doing real science. But now I worry I didn’t think the problem all the way through.”

The project, first of it’s kind in the world, was a low-field gingerbread magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) device designed to monitor brain development of genetically engineered gingerbread people, developed by the Departments of Biology and Machine Learning and funded by a DARPA “tasty soldiers” initiative.

“Everything looked really good going into the first scan,” reports Verstynen, “The test run without a subject looked really good. We loaded in our pilot subject and just completely forgot the coating of the candied sprinkles that make up the gingerbread people’s eyes. It was horrible… the things just popped right out!”

Given the magnetic strength of the MRI, human subjects are typically screened of all metal before entering the scanner via a questionnaire that asks questions like “Have you ever had a surgical implant?”, “Have you ever been shot by a bullet or bb gun?”

“We just completely forgot to ask whether any part of the subject was composed of or tastily coated in metal,” says Verstynen. “We are currently taking down the facility by a warm fire with a glass of milk.”

Verstynen reports that a new facility will be baked as soon as changes have been approved by CMU’s IRB.