Day 34: Final Destination

Today is my last day at ASU, and my mentor decided that I practice my presentation in front of people who work in the lab during today's lab meeting. I was the only one who presented which made me feel bad for those who walked all the way to the conference room, but not a lot of people came, mostly because they had actual presentations to do. I was asked only one question, but was unable to answer it. Dr. Parikh answered it in lieu of me, so, if anyone else asks that question at my final presentation at school, I'll be able to answer it. Besides that, they all said they liked my presentation, which made me happy :)

 So seeing as this is my last day in the lab...

I would like to express my gratitude to all who have read this blog and journeyed with me these past 3 months.

I would also like to thank my superiors who have done so much to make this project possible. Specifically, Mr. Paul McClernon, Mrs. Elizabeth McConaghy, Dr. Marco Santello, and Dr. Pranav Parikh.

Day 33: Freaking Out

Here's a glimpse of my presentation that I have been working so diligently on (left). Last week, I mentioned to my mentor how this week will be my last week in the lab, so he suggested that I present my presentation to people in the lab. I seriously thought he was joking. This Friday, I will be giving a presentation to people I have either never seen before or never spoken to before. I am really nervous. Everyone here is really nice and all, but they all will secretly be judging me, and I know it. Luckily, my mentor is willing to help me fix up my slides and my speech. Hopefully that will be enough to compensate for the neuroscience knowledge everyone knows I don't have... I'm freaking out, as you can see. I really should give myself more credit, but everyone in this lab knows so much about the brain and TMS and experiments like mine that I'm afraid I'll appear inept. Everyone here is either a graduate student or a post-graduate scholar, so I'm terrified.

Negativity aside, there's really nothing else I have to say. Just need to add more notes to my presentation to read off of for my trial run Friday. Wish me good luck!

Day 32: The Beginning of the End

This is my last week interning here at ASU. And even though I'm picked on incessantly by Juan (a student graduating from ASU this spring who is sitting right behind me as I type this), my mentor, and everyone else, I'll miss everyone here, especially those who welcomed me so warmly.

Anyway, I just checked the calendar, and it seems I only have a week to finish my presentation. I'm way past halfway done, so no worries there. My final product is coming along as well so I have no complaints nor problems there either. Senior project aside, I have to make posters to advertise Prom, practice for the school concert that's tomorrow, practice for the Symphonette concert taking place Thursday morning, and study for AP Spanish. So I'm pretty busy...

But GOOD NEWS!

My blog has over 1000 views! That is amazing! Thank you to all of my readers, especially the faithful ones, who made this proud moment possible.

Thanks for reading!

Day 31: The End Is Near

Today, I was properly taught how to interpret the data into graphs. Turns out, I've been doing it wrong, so here are now my new, more comprehensible graphs (out of habit, I made the titles as detailed-yet-elegant as possible).

This graph illustrates the difference between the excitability values coming from the FDI (index finger) muscle. The two lines seem to be quite parallel until it reaches 1000 ms (when the Go cue appears). At 1000 ms, there exists a significant difference between the P-MEP values and the P+F-MEP values.





This graph illustrates something similar to what the above graph shows, except this is for the APB (thumb) muscle. It also shows a significant difference at 1000 ms.

• Side note: We had to disregard some data points at 1400 and 1500 ms because data become really noisy. This is due to the fact that movement occurs approximately 300-500 ms after Go cue (which flashed at 1000 ms). 

Lastly, I created a ratio graph to see where the greatest difference between P and P+F occurred. Again, the significant values were at 1000 ms (disregarding 1400 and 1500 once more).







This all indicates that the corticospinal excitability (CSE) is task-dependent at 1000 ms. The comparison of CSE between P and P+F aims at determining whether the sequence of controlling digit position followed by force application is planned similarly to controlling digit position alone, and thus, my project has reached a conclusion.

Day 30: Pizza Party

The Minister of Social Activities in the lab planned out a pizza party for everyone who works in the lab. Everyone here is so kind, and I'm grateful that I was invited to enjoy pizza and conversation with them. Even the Director of the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering here at Arizona State University was there! I seldom see him, which is disappointing since he is my mentor for this senior research project.

Speaking about my senior research project, I submitted my abstract yesterday to my adviser, Mr. Paul McClernon, who gave me really great feedback. Now I'm working really hard on the edits. The abstract is due tomorrow so wish me luck!

Day 28: Sick Day

I wasn't able to go to the lab today because I offered to stay at home to help my brother, who is at home sick. So I won't be able to attend today's Journal Club meeting.

For today, I've been working more on my abstract. Since the deadline is coming up quickly, I don't have time to finish my article before writing the abstract, so hopefully my abstract will turn out well. I have everything I want to say, but putting it all together elegantly is challenging.

What exactly do I do in this project? You've seen me post about TMS research, data analysis, and...that's basically it. The actually experiment tries to see if there's a difference in excitability of the finger muscles when planning to position the fingers (P) vs. planning to position the fingers and apply a force (P+F). To do this, TMS is used to stimulate the motor cortex and the EMG records the amount of muscle activity from that stimulation. The EMG also records the actual movement of the muscle that takes place approximate 500 ms after the Go cue (Day 25), but we only need the data of the muscle activity while planning for the movement. The objective is to better understand the relationship between the brain and the movement of the fingers. I hope to put something like this paragraph as my abstract.

In addition to working on the abstract, I've been analyzing the data more, hopefully creating decipherable, more simplified graphs. The graphs I made previously involve the 4 muscles we put electrodes on: FDI, APB, ADM, and FCR. 

But for this project, I only need to look at FDI and APB because the fingers associated to these muscles are the index finger and thumb, which act directly on the object during experiments.

So not much is happening today. Maybe I'll bake something with all this free time! Hopefully though, I'll be able to show more on my next blog post or in my final product and presentation!

Day 27: Someone Stole My Seat...

... and my desk! So now I'm sitting on this too-comfy-to-be-comfy couch. Fortunately, I'm willing to overlook this obstacle and be productive today. I've been working on my abstract for my senior research project which is really quite challenging because of the fact that it should be terse. So to get the most important points of my project, I'm working on my final product which will be a little bit like an article. I remember in Capstone Physics, we wrote articles to get published and we would write the abstracts last because it's easier to remember the thesis once your thoughts have been arranged. So it's kind of a habit for me to write the abstracts last.

• Side note: One of my friends from Capstone Physics, Jeff Milling, has been working really hard doing more research on nuclear fusion on top of his senior research project because his paper (which was co-written by Ryan Hearn) is actually really close to publishing! Absolutely brilliant work! I really hope you guys get published!

In addition, I've been reading another article for Journal Club tomorrow about the contralesional dorsal premotor cortex (cPMd) and what its purpose is after strokes. The study uses TMS and fMRI. TMS has been becoming very popular when being used to study strokes, which continues to intrigue me. The TMS is used for several different studies and treatments that it is becoming more versatile. It could be because the TMS is used to affect the brain, which controls everything in the body. I love the brain.

Thanks for reading my blog!