Another day of renting my brain. This time my second session for a study that looks at ‘Neuroanatomical, neurofunctional and neurobehavioral sequelae of mild hypoxia following cardiac arrest’ or in other words ‘aims to co-relate risk factors for Cardiovascular disease with Cognitive abilities in cardiac arrest patients. In order to establish a baseline of results, we are currently testing with healthy adults who would serve as a control.’
Basically how much memory loss does cardiac arrest cause. It’s a four part study. The first session, which I’ve already done, was at Sunnybrook – where after explanation and an initial memory test – in which I sorted items in two groups into subgroups – then had to recall which went where when looking at a random set of those items with items I’d never seen mixed in.
The next stage was doing a similar task while getting an MRI scan – this part lasted about 70 minutes, of which part was spend on that task and rest then taking various scans – an MRI is like being stuck inside Aphex Twin or Squarepusher’s turntable as he looks for ‘beats’ & find a single four second sample that is then repeated, unaltered for seven minutes. Only the MRI sounds are never that interesting. Oh, yes, and you have to keep as still as possible while it’s going on. Even though ‘trance’ sets in easily for me I was so glad to get up from that table.
This second session (& the others) will be at Baycrest – somewhat easier to get to than Sunnybrook. The second session, today, was desk work – paper, pencil, then some computer stuff. All around memory & layers of memory i.e. remember assigned, random, three letters while counting backward by 3’s – for each backward count different letters & different number starting point – much harder than it sounds.
