By Colin Simon, PhD student.
Since our last entry we applied for ethical approval of one or our studies, named Moving Minds. There is nothing dangerous or unethical about Moving Minds, ethical approval has become a standard procedure for any studies involving participants. The application consists of describing many different aspects of the proposed research, but in essence it is about making sure that your research causes as little harm as possible, and that your research is of sufficient quality to not waste anyone’s time and effort. It was easy enough to demonstrate and we are glad to get our minds moving and start the study.
Moving Minds will be about collecting evidence on how our mind makes us move using Electroencephalography (EEG) and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS). Apart from it’s scientific endeavours, the study will help us familiarise ourselves with the technical equipment we will use to evaluate a possible clinical application of the knowledge we gain. This experience will help us overcome problems and reduce potential discomforts we would encounter when eventually working with stroke survivors. We are still missing some key pieces to start measuring, but with everything ordered and the ethics application pending, we are confident that we will be moving minds imminently.
To hit the ground running, we have set up the equipment we have to test and practice the procedures on ourselves. As predicted problems were encountered and fixed, leaving us in state of anxious anticipation, awaiting our first participants and dreading the first problems we will have to solve under pressure.
The ethics approval and participants were not the only things we were awaiting this week. Professor David Bolton from the Utah State University came to visit. His input on all our thoughts on experiments will be well appreciated. Furthermore, his expertise on fall prevention will be appreciated in a talk on the topic next week.
In the meantime, we wish everyone a significantly awesome weekend.