Interesting Research

[xSTALLiONx]

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Just wondering if anyone out there has done any interesting research during a summer or school year.
I've done "basic science" research on molecules and proteins but find it EXTREMELY boring.. so my definition of interesting is excluding it.. I think I'm gearing towards clinical type research but am brainstorming different areas that I could explore..

What I'm trying to find is ideas of research people have done that might be something like..
Brain Feedback- focusing on people being able to control their heart rate with their mind by watching it in real-time.. or being able to move robotic body parts with their mind..

Use of technology.. Google Maps Mashup creating radius plot of fatal heart attack victims in promixity of hospital (actually.. time would be a better corelation than distance but you get the point..)

Basically, I love technology.. I'm great at computers.. so I want to mix the medical research in with my other passions..

I'm sure there's gotta be one research area that someone else has dabbled in that might interest me.. RFID?? etc..

 

[relentless11]

Plenty of summer internships available, and even more research labs needing summer "slaves" to work hard. 😉 Just call local schools. Since you like that technology stuff, why not look into something relating to biomedical engineering. If you're lucky, might be able to find a BME lab that also does clinical work (MRI, biosensors, etc).

 

[PariPari]

using maps in science is GIS, it's kinda cool. there a guy in the lab who uses it to plot were cases are from to determine if there is clustering or something, he keeps explaining, but i keep forgetting, something to do w/ outbreak notification & local emergency preparedness that they stuck in the grant to get money to do the actual study

 

[thatslife]

I know of BrainGate, which is a microchip which has been implanted in the brains of two quads. The chip detects movement vectors in the motor strip of the brian and then transmits this info by radiowave to a receiver which carries out the action (i.e. moving a mouse cursor or turning off the lights). The surgery happened about a year ago this time. The PI is Professor John Donoghue at Brown (link to this project: http://donoghue.neuro.brown.edu/motor.php). He's been covered in popular science and the like, its very very interesting and surprisingly not that complicated. (Lots of math and computing). Just google him, you'll come up with a lot. Good hunting.

 

[tch001]

I know of BrainGate, which is a microchip which has been implanted in the brains of two quads. The chip detects movement vectors in the motor strip of the brian and then transmits this info by radiowave to a receiver which carries out the action (i.e. moving a mouse cursor or turning off the lights). The surgery happened about a year ago this time. The PI is Professor John Donoghue at Brown (link to this project: http://donoghue.neuro.brown.edu/motor.php). He's been covered in popular science and the like, its very very interesting and surprisingly not that complicated. (Lots of math and computing). Just google him, you'll come up with a lot. Good hunting.

I had an internship at NIH last summer and some of my fellow interns were working on stuff similar to that (one was trying to make a game of pong you could play simply by beeing hooked up to an EEG and thinking about the way the paddle should go!) We worked in the human motor control section of the national institute on neurological disorder and stroke. The really cool thing was not only did we get to do interesting, fun research but we got to see patients too! We were invited to sit in on all the clinics, and they even asked for our opinion a lot! We also got to help out in a lot of therapeutic clinical trials and research. I definitley reccomend it as interesting and patient oriented! I think the deadline to apply for an NIH internship this upcoming summer might have passed already though....

 

[n3ur05ur930n]

Just wondering if anyone out there has done any interesting research during a summer or school year.
I've done "basic science" research on molecules and proteins but find it EXTREMELY boring.. so my definition of interesting is excluding it.. I think I'm gearing towards clinical type research but am brainstorming different areas that I could explore..

What I'm trying to find is ideas of research people have done that might be something like..
Brain Feedback- focusing on people being able to control their heart rate with their mind by watching it in real-time.. or being able to move robotic body parts with their mind..

Use of technology.. Google Maps Mashup creating radius plot of fatal heart attack victims in promixity of hospital (actually.. time would be a better corelation than distance but you get the point..)

Basically, I love technology.. I'm great at computers.. so I want to mix the medical research in with my other passions..

I'm sure there's gotta be one research area that someone else has dabbled in that might interest me.. RFID?? etc..

fMRI. You get to look at brains all day and it is pretty cutting edge as far as neuroimaging. There are also clinical applications for neurosurgical planning in pts with tumors or epilepsy.

 

[xSTALLiONx]

I had an internship at NIH last summer and some of my fellow interns were working on stuff similar to that (one was trying to make a game of pong you could play simply by beeing hooked up to an EEG and thinking about the way the paddle should go!) We worked in the human motor control section of the national institute on neurological disorder and stroke. The really cool thing was not only did we get to do interesting, fun research but we got to see patients too! We were invited to sit in on all the clinics, and they even asked for our opinion a lot! We also got to help out in a lot of therapeutic clinical trials and research. I definitley reccomend it as interesting and patient oriented! I think the deadline to apply for an NIH internship this upcoming summer might have passed already though....

I'm looking ahead to next summer... but i know if I procrastinate.. All the cool stuff will be taken and I'll be stuck looking at cells or molecules again..

 

[cooldreams]

so if i wanted to do work invovling new technologies that allowed communication to and from the brain with a computer or similar electronic device, what specialty should i go into???

im thinking neurology because they focus on the actual functioning of the nervous system.

but they dont actually do anything to the body physically do they?? or do they perform any "minimally invasive" procedures??

so with that im thinking maybe neurosurgery??? there would likely be some surgical procedures involved, however these would really be minimal, just to allow an electrical connection to a periphial or central nerve for communications in something.

or is this what interventional neurology would do??

thoughts??

 

[Surg Path]

so if i wanted to do work invovling new technologies that allowed communication to and from the brain with a computer or similar electronic device, what specialty should i go into???

im thinking neurology because they focus on the actual functioning of the nervous system.

but they dont actually do anything to the body physically do they?? or do they perform any "minimally invasive" procedures??

so with that im thinking maybe neurosurgery??? there would likely be some surgical procedures involved, however these would really be minimal, just to allow an electrical connection to a periphial or central nerve for communications in something.

or is this what interventional neurology would do??

thoughts??

As for interest in computer work, bioinformatics is an exploding field, especially if you like stats, translational research, and LOTS of data (i.e. genome-wide expression analysis).

If you really want to do neurofeedback/biofeedback, the people that know this field are neuropsychologists. That is, PhD's and PsyD's. Certainly one could try to get into this as a neurologist, but as a neurologist you will be way to busy with patients having seizures, headaches, PNS disorders, ect., that such specific work as neurofeedback will take serious effort.

That's my impression from a few neurologists I work with, and gaving family members who do neurospych.