Week One on the Job

My first week on the job began on Monday, May 22nd, and it felt like a wonderful homecoming. My internship supervisor and PhD candidate Taylor Zuidema was the first to greet me as we entered the Imaging Research Facility (IRF) at IU’s psych building. I should mention how incredibly lucky I am to get to perform research at an institution with such a powerful research-grade MRI machine. Most medical MRI machines utilize a magnetic field strength of 1.5 Tesla; however, our machine uses double that strength at 3 Tesla which allows us to get much more precise resolution for our imaging protocols (If you’ve read the intro to this blog, you know my wonder with modern technology, and my astonishment with the MRI machine and modern fMRI protocols is no exception). Anyways, it was wonderful to see Taylor and other familiar faces as I began my new, upgraded role for my second year as an undergraduate assistant on the study. This year, I had already completed my training for “L1 certification” which means that I get to assist the main MRI operator for our scans. As such, for my first day, I was to sit-in on a scan and observe all our protocols in-person.

Our protocols for this year include basic topological scans of resting state behavior and then more specifically Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Imaging (MRSI) to observe the metabolites of brain activity in the specific brain regions of the Medial Prefrontal Cortex (MPFC) and the Corpus Callosum (CC). The MPFC has been implicated in a variety of executive processing tasks, especially social and emotional processing and as such is incredibly important for our purposes of examining the mental health outcomes of our football players. The CC on the other hand is the point of convergence between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Although common perceptions of “left-brained” and “right-brained” processing has undoubtedly been exaggerated, empirical evidence certainly supports a model of functional separation between the two hemispheres related to emotional and rational processing and as such, the integration of these two areas is imperative for the evaluation of mental health outcomes.

Beyond running the scanner and assisting with other data collection activities this summer, I was also informed that the PI of our study Dr. Kei Kawata wants me to choose an independent area of data analysis from last year’s data and write a paper about it! Obviously upon hearing this news I was more excited than I can say I have been in recent history. I’ve been working hard to refine my scientific writing abilities in preparation for this moment and it seems that it has finally come. As of now I’m in the process of brainstorming lines of analysis to choose from the extensive stockpile of data we’ve collected over the past two years. I’m honestly so stoked on this area of research that I’ve got tons of ideas, so I imagine the refining process will be one of narrowing down my vision to a manageable sector of our data inventory.

Here's a solid chunk of our team running a subject through the MRI scanner (it usually only takes two people, this scan was more of an orientation for everyone week one)