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<\/a>I was lucky enough to be working in Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, during Brain Awareness week – and I got this awesome hat to prove it!<\/p><\/div>\n
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In return for kitting me out with this array of new skills, knowledge and contacts, I have been helping UCT out with a \u2018mega-analysis\u2019 of MRI data at the CUBIC institute. It\u2019s really been a useful process for me too \u2013 while everyone has been more than helpful in explaining different three-letter acronyms of neuroimaging (and there are a lot – check out page two of this document<\/a>), the opportunity to actually get stuck in and do something has really allowed me to grasp some of the more unfamiliar concepts.<\/p>\n Typically, MRI information stays within the institute that actually did the research \u2013 it\u2019s confidential data about participants, it\u2019s expensive, and everyone has their own ways of doing things (which, in the current academic\/financial evironment, people sometimes want to keep close to their chest). But really, there\u2019s no reason why MRI data can\u2019t be shared amongst researchers providing that no data about the participant is attached to it<\/a>. A EUSARNAD research group lead by Dan Stein is doing just this \u2013 turning a collection of smaller studies (10 \u2013 30 individuals) to one \u2018mega-analysis\u2019 (around 300 people).<\/p>\n EUSARNAD members get a hands-on learning experience of the human brain (“the texture of a reasonably overripe ripe avocado”…!<\/p><\/div>\n But there are some hazards with an undertaking of this scale. Different scanner set-ups, different MRI sequences and different sample populations will all have an impact on results, and it\u2019s important to be aware of these things. That\u2019s why every single scan is being thoroughly quality checked by hand (ok, mostly by computer program, and a little bit by hand), segment-by-segment, until the researcher is happy that all of the data is of good enough quality to draw a meaningful finding about sufferers of social anxiety disorder<\/a>.<\/p>\n But it doesn\u2019t stop there. The scale of the collaboration means that the quality checking is being done many times over, by a different researcher each time, at a different institution. This isn\u2019t wasted effort \u2013 even if it turns out that every researcher churns out identical outputs (which they probably won\u2019t). Every nuance of each quality-checking process of every brainscan is meticulously noted down, allowing a comparison of each researcher. What\u2019s great about this is that it will provide some hard evidence of the pros and cons of sharing MRI data on such a grand scale \u2013 and hopefully will promote more collaboration like EUSARNAD in the future.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n – Ben<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With an incomplete thesis looming over my head (and the first twinges of \u2018The Fear\u2019 starting to rear their ugly heads late at night), this morning I thought to myself \u201coooh \u2013 I need to write another EUSARNAD entry. After … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/eusarnad\/files\/2013\/04\/photo1.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
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