As I lie here in my bed writing this I can honestly say that it’s a place I’ve seen far too much of this week. Monday was alright I guess, I did nothing much. Tuesday – In bed. Wednesday – In bed. Thursday, felt a touch better but only really took part in an fMRI study concerning motor systems and sensory perception. This made me feel a bit rough, but I’m guessing it was all psychological, or just the titanium staples warming up…
Anyhow, the second part was on Friday morning. Exactly the same thing but I got the novel experience of watching Pete’s brain appear on the screen in 2 seconds blips (very clean scan), quick buggers are these scanners you know. For the geeks out there we use a Phillips Achieva 3T scanner with additions such as 8-coil head tools, and specialist spinal tools. It’s all viewable using the built-in software of Phillips i-View BOLD or Brain Voyager Turbo QX (or something like that…). And the best news for me relating to this, I’ll probably be using it for my own purposes in the next couple of years. Score!
You see, this relates to my research area. Basically I don’t want to write too much as the psychological community is a cut-throat area with much backstabbing and stealing of ideas. But let’s just say it revolves around the idea that Parkinson’s disease sufferers might be able to help themselves through some of their cognitive functioning deficits with relatively simple interventions. It all concerns different cortico-loops and how they impact upon the output of the cortex, in particular the motor regions. Anyhow, if our predictions are correct then the initial stages will indicate our hypothesis is correct and then I can pull it apart in the forthcoming years, using whatever techniques are applicable. And fMRI would be ideal to show this. So it’s been a good week.
Oh, and B-Watch was stupendous as always, but next week’s outing will be immense…
