Kiri Carlson

Greetings Bloggers, Readers, One and All, and Welcome to My Blog: Are Concussions Sexist? Gender Based Differences in Sports-Related Head Trauma!

My name is Kiri Carlson, and I am so excited to have you join me on the senior project adventure. In the third trimester of senior year at BASIS Scottsdale, we say goodbye to the 6 AM mornings, the cramped high school hallways, and the air-conditioned classrooms (even in the winter!). Now for the next 10 weeks before graduation, instead of staying at home in my PJ’s and watching Netflix all day, I have opted to take part in the Basis Scottsdale Senior Project, an independent research opportunity for students to explore and research their current interests.

A big thanks to Dr. Hara and Dr. Zwart, our intermediaries with Mayo Clinic, who helped introduce me to my on-site mentor Dr. Catherine Chong, Assistant Professor of Neurology and research faculty member in The Neuroimaging of Headache Disorders Laboratory. Also, a 3rd period College Counseling round of applause for my wonderful guidance counselor, Ms. Mitrovich, as well as my fantastic Faculty Advisor, Ms. Wilson. We still have 3 more months to go, but I'm grateful for all they've done for me thus far.

For my research, I will be determining whether concussions discriminate based on gender, speaking in terms of visual differences and the methods of treatment. When hearing the word ‘sexism’, it usually elicits a negative connotation, but with my project, I hope to use these differences to substantiate the need for more personalized treatments of concussions. For a more detailed description of my project, check out my Senior Project Proposal. Sidenote: In my 18 years of living, I’ve never (knock on wood) had the misfortune of receiving a concussion (but I have been hit in the face with a volleyball if that counts for anything).

During my time at Mayo, Dr. Chong will begin conducting a one-day research study between a control group of healthy patients and those who have sustained an acute concussion. Only patients with post-concussions of less than two weeks will be included in this study. Participants will fill out a questionnaire then have their brains scanned. As for me, I will have the great privilege of getting to observe during the evaluation and testing of the 18-55 years old patients.

Above: Mayo Clinic's Phoenix Campus

But of course, all work and no play makes Kiri a dull girl, so I’ll be sure to find time for even more fun. This may include: catching up on the newest season of Sherlock, hanging out with friends, and/or telling myself I’ll get more sleep when in reality I’ll be browsing social media.

Now if you take a look at the sidebar to the right, you'll find a list of my fellow group members' blogs (for one cannot simply look at one blog). Lastly, stay tuned on my blog as I make headway into the world of hospitals and head injuries!

When One Door Closes Another Opens...

Sadly but surely our time has come to an end. My fellow SP participants and I will be presenting on Saturday, May 6th between 9:30 AM and 4:20 PM. However, don't sweat it if you can't make it, you can still check out my final SP presentation as I'm sure my peers are doing with their presentations on their blogs as well. I'm so proud that I got to be a part of the senior project and I could not be more thankful to all the people that made that happen. That means you: my on-site mentor Dr. Chong, my faculty advisor Ms. Wilson, the Senior Project Committee, and of course, my dedicated followers. It has been a pleasure getting to share my experiences with you, and I wish you luck in all your future endeavors. I'm going off to college next fall, but I definitely won't be forgetting all that I've learned from my senior project. Thank you and have an awesome day!!!

SPRING BREAK

As you know, I'm off for my Spring Break! Enjoy your week!!!

I Would Like to Thank the Academy...

I know this is a bit late for my last post, but I would just like to quickly add my thank yous. First, I would like to thank Ms. Mitrovich, Ms. Conner, and the Senior Project Committee for providing me with this opportunity and setting up this network of wonderful resources for finding a project to fit the student. Next, I would like to thank Dr. Chong and the Department of Neurology for hosting my internship and not only helping me with this project but also for giving me invaluable experience in the real world. I will take those skills wherever I go. Of course, I also must thank my faculty adviser, Ms. Wilson, for the feedback and for being someone I can talk my ideas out with. We may not be done yet, but you have helped me so much already and it's greatly appreciated. Last, and most definitely not least, many many thanks to all my followers who have stuck with me for all these weeks, even when they weren't the most exciting weeks or they were the most exciting (aka changing my project in the last two weeks). It has been great getting to be the star in this adventure and share my own point of view. I hope I have provided some insight into the inner workings of an internship and convinced my 9th and 10th graders the benefits of doing one. Thanks again for all your support and I wish everyone an awesome rest of the year!!!! <3

My Official Last Week!!

Welcome back everyone to Week 9! I'm sad to say our adventure together is nearing its end, sooner than most since I've chosen to take my Spring Break during Week 10. This wasn't a voluntary decision rather I'll be using that time to visit some schools because oh yeah, college is still a thing. Don't worry, it won't all be academic, we'll actually be heading down to NC to watch my sister, who goes to Duke, perform for her Chinese dance showcase. Then near the end of the week, we're going to our cousin's wedding, so exciting stuff ahead!

Anyway, back on topic, this week was pretty much business as usual. All I've been doing is working on my presentation and final product. I am proud to say though that I finally finished revising my proposal, so that's one thing I can cross off my checklist. Since I'll be gone next week (we leave this Thursday, actually), I probably won't be able to start actually making the poster until I get back. The plan is to type everything out that needs to go on the poster next week between my college visits and fun, so that all I'll have to do is print and tape the words to the poster when I get back. Who knows if I'll actually stick to that plan, but I'll try my best. I apologize for the short length of this post, besides finishing my presentation, I didn't really do anything else this week. Thanks again for following along!

I can't believe our time together is almost over! But don't fret, I still have to make a Final Post, so you haven't seen the last of me! ;D

QUICK ANNOUNCEMENT #2!!!

Hey everybody! Hopefully this will be the last change I'll be announcing. Unfortunately, this is going be a pretty major one. I know a lot of you were attracted to my blog because I was going to look at gender-based differences. Alas, the study that I was hoping to focus on (that had to do with gender differences) is incomplete and has only just begun the early stages of enrollment. This means I have to switch over to a more developed study that could be just as exciting but regrettably does not have to do with gender differences. The plan now is to compare the structural brain changes in patients with post-traumatic headache (PTH) and those who are healthy. I know this may be a bit disappointing, but I promise I will make this just as exciting as my original question. I'm also very aware that this is a huge change to make when I'm in my last couple weeks of my internship. But, I'm crossing my fingers that everything will work out. I'll need to revise my proposal and change my title (if any of you have some good titles in store, feel free to comment below).

Here's some good news? I think I have my idea for my Final Product, but I'll wait until I'm more sure before I share. A massive thank you to you all for your continued support and understanding! These last few weeks will be an exciting time to see my research finally come together (optimistically speaking)!! :)



Keep Calm, It's "Only" Week 8

Hey, everyone! Back for Week 8, I see. As you know, my project was just casually minding its own business, when suddenly! We were no longer in Kansas anymore!! Yes, and there's my attempted humor, I hope that didn't make you cringe too much. Again, I am sorry to be making this change so late in the project, but I know (well I'm hoping) this is just as interesting. To put it simply, my topic has changed from gender-based differences in concussions to comparing structural brain changes between PTH patients and healthy controls. I'm trying out the new title that I came up with (a bit unoriginal maybe, but I tried my best).

So, PTH, or post-traumatic headache, is a primary headache disorder that develops within a week after a concussion. It is the only headache disorder to be caused by a physical injury to the head. The others I've actually discussed in previous posts are tension-type headache, migraine, trigeminal autonomic cephalalgias (or cluster headache). The hypothesis for this study if that there would be structural brain changes in PTH patients when compared to healthy controls. Patients would come in, fill out questionnaires, then head over to radiology for an MRI scan. Radiologists will then take the MRI scans of both groups, and use cortical thickness, a tool for measuring the thickness of the cerebral cortex, to analyze for brain changes. A thicker cortex is the sign of a healthy brain. Below is a picture of how they use cortical thickness.

During this week, I mainly worked on revising my proposal and beginning to make a plan for my final product. I haven't quite finished editing my proposal, so maybe don't check that out just yet. I'll have it finished by next week if you would like to check it out then. What I've got going right now for my final product is a scientific post of this study. Dr. Chong showed me some examples of the posters in Mayo, and I thought it would be cool if I could do the same thing. I think of it as a more formal version of those bio labs we would do with the intro, methodology, results, etc. Here are some pictures of the posters at Mayo to give you a better idea (I don't think I could make mine as professional as those, but I'll do my best). 

Anyways, that was my week! I hope I didn't overwhelm you with too much info. As always, comment below with your lovely questions, and I'll be seeing you all soon for Week 9!! :)

Cracking the Case Study

How's it going? Are we all hanging in there? Can you believe it? Week 7 is already upon us. I hope all you mock-takers didn’t stress out too much this weekend. I had a pretty uneventful weekend. So, let’s take a look at the first couple days of my week:

Today I welcomed back Dr. Chong from her Spring Break in Utah. She said it was very enjoyable and snowy. And yet here in Arizona, it's the first day of spring and it already feels like the beginning of summer! I began scoring a few of the COMPASS 31’s from the patient files using the program I helped to create last week. It worked like a charm, and I’m super proud of my work. Then for the rest of the day, I finished up the second case study Dr. Chong had made up for me. This time it was “A 60-yo male who came to the ER with ‘the worst headache of his life.’ He had dizziness, vomiting, and blurred vision. However,  no fever was reported. Two weeks previous, he experienced a similar headache, but he had not gone to the ER. His medical history comes up as normal.” So, what happened? Below is a screenshot of the spreadsheet that I created for this case. The colors don’t mean anything, I just wanted to be able to distinguish the different diseases that I had listed, except the purple boxes, which are the definitions of terms I didn’t know or needed a refresher of. For my second case study, I’ve now ranked the diseases from least likely to most likely. My research has shown that this patient might be suffering from one of the following: Dehydration, A concussion, A stroke, A migraine, or A Brain Aneurysm.

Then on Wednesday, I showed Dr. Chong what I had found. She was also thinking this patient was suffering from a brain aneurysm, the "ballooning" of a blood vessel in the brain. After I shared my research, she went into a little more detail about each of my 'diseases', mainly how these are diagnosed as well as the surgery required for the more dangerous conditions (stroke and brain aneurysm). With a stroke, surgeons can provide medications (such as TPA) to dissolve the blood clot, resuming blood flow to the brain, or perform a carotid endarterectomy, removal of the arterial plaque that runs along each side of the neck to the brain. Another possibility is the use of angioplasty and stents, which is the insertion of a balloon into the carotid artery to expand a narrowed artery and supported by a stent. Unfortunately, the medication will only work if the signs of stroke are caught within a certain period of time. If not, surgery will have to be involved to regain blood flow to the brain.

With a brain aneurysm, they can use a cerebral angiogram, the less invasive option, where a catheter is inserted into the groin to navigate to the enlarged blood vessel. Once there, it will eject tiny detachable coils into the area, blocking blood flow and allowing a blood clot to form. However, if the blood vessel has already begun to burst, they'll have to use surgical clipping, the invasive option, in which they will enter through the skull to clamp the base of an aneurysm and stop blood flow to it. 

On Thursday, there wasn't much to report. I started out by scoring some straggler patient files from the Structural and Functional Neuroimaging in Patients with Headache Disorders study. Although, Dr. Chong was able to show me, on a small scale, the beginning process of analyzing this collected data.

My expectations going into this part of the study was that there would be a lot of statistics involved (fortunately I can still remember some of the stats terms I learned in AP stats like z scores and t tests). Not sure if that vocab will come in handy, but we'll see. For this analysis, Dr. Chong used a program called the SPSS Statistics Viewer, which is some sort of tool used to statistically analyze sets of data. We compared the ages, pain thresholds, and sensitivities to light and sound between those with cluster headache, migraine, and the healthy controls. We found the mean age to be highest in cluster headache patients, and the pain threshold to be highest in migraine patients. It has also been observed that migraineurs are most sensitive to light than those with cluster headache. Researchers aren't really sure why this is yet, but they're hoping these studies will provide some answers.

That was all for this week! Hope you enjoyed my post, and I thank you all for your continued support and thoughtful comments over the past weeks!!

“Professional” Programmer in the House!

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone! Despite my on-site mentor going on her daughter's Spring Break this week, Dr. Chong still found some fun things for me to do this week. She asked one of her other interns, Ph.D. student Gina Dumkrieger, to have me help out in the making of a program to score the COMPASS 31, a new and improved version of the ASP (Autonomic Symptom Profile) and the COMPASS (Composite Autonomic Symptom Score). Because I only worked on the program this week, I'll try my best to describe what I was doing.

Originally, the ASP was a 169-item instrument for measuring autonomic symptoms. From it, they generated the COMPASS, an 84-item questionnaire. Sadly not everyone has the time to answer 253 questions. Plus, problems such as an overcomplicated computer analysis process and redundant questions had arisen. Enter the COMPASS 31, a 31-item questionnaire that applies a much simpler scoring algorithm, thereby suitable for widespread use in autonomic research and practice. The questions were split into 7 different domains: Orthostatic Intolerance (questions 1-4), Vasomotor (5-7), Secretomotor (8-11), Gastrointestinal (12-23), Bladder (24-26), and Pupillomotor (27-31). I'm not sure if I explained that well, but check out this article, COMPASS 31: A Refined and Abbreviated Composite Autonomic Symptom Score, for more information.

Since the days Gina and I come into Mayo don't overlap, we have mainly been communicating via email. My job was to type the questions from the questionnaire into the program in addition to finishing the coding for the questionnaire. Below are the first eight questions from the COMPASS 31 input into a program called Macros. I don't know the details about this program, but it's something in Excel. Then the second picture is the code behind the questionnaire.

I've never really coded anything except for a little in Linear Algebra, though I didn't really know what was going on there either. I'll try to explain this to the best of my amateur coding abilities. For each question, each answer has a different value. So depending on the answer a subject chooses makes up the score of the questionnaire. Someone else came up with the equation as well as the value that each answer has, so I only had to copy and paste the equation for each question then put the value of each answer. And here's the final result! The table underneath it is a spreadsheet where all the data will go once patients complete the questionnaire.

That's all for this week! I appreciate your support and all your lovely comments. I'm hoping in the next few weeks that we'll begin data analysis so that I can continue making progress with my project. I'm also still in need of a final product, so any ideas are welcomed. ;D I'll see you next time for Week 7!! :)

Week 5, Stayin' Alive

Hope my 9th and 10th-grade BASIS followers had a relaxing Spring Break! Comment anything fun you did over break so that I can enjoy it vicariously. You know what comes next…week overview time:

Move On Monday

You can sigh in relief for today is the last day I'll be scanning files. I finished the last of them, and if I see another patient file it'll be too soon...only kidding! I didn't mind the work at all, but I'm glad that I'll be moving on to something new. We also had our usual Monday meeting with the usual enrollment and status update discussions.

Our conference table for our Monday meetings

My new desk/cubicle!

The last of the files I had to scan!

Work, Work, Work Wednesday

And for my next "trick", Dr. Chong assigned me the task of stepping into the lab coat of the radiologists and learning how to research to find a patient's diagnosis. To put my skills to the test, she gave me a practice single case study with the only details being: "The patient is a 30-year-old female who came into the ER. She presents with sudden weakness and tingling in her right arm. She also has a history of chronic high blood pressure. What do you think happened?" All I can say is thank goodness for the internet! I can't even begin to imagine all the books I would've had to look through without the existence of computers. Below is a picture of the spreadsheet I created with several diseases that I researched which could possibly match her case. Dr. Chong and I will be discussing my research tomorrow, so I'll be able to tell if any of my googling paid off.

Thursday Discussion

So, pat on the back for me! Dr. Chong was very pleased with my spreadsheet, and she complimented me on my idea of having separate characteristics to describe each disease. Plus, the great thing about this activity is that there is no wrong answer. This patient could have any disease, just as long as the symptoms match. Then after our discussion, I learned a little about how to create a program for scoring one of the questionnaires, which was very interesting. That's all for now. I hope you enjoyed this post, and I'll see you all next week! :)

Printer Scanners, Brain MRI Scanners, Scanners Everywhere!

The fourth week of our projects is coming and going so quickly I barely have time to catch my breath. I’m telling you, there are too few hours in the day to get everything done! But let’s review the week, shall we:

Just Your Average Monday

Not much new happened today. Another Monday meeting with few changes to report in regards to the studies. Then came a long session of scanning and more scanning. I almost broke the machine once...apparently, today was not my lucky day. Instead of getting to stand there mindlessly while it scanned away, the printer decided to keep getting jammed with my papers. Then it would finish scanning because I didn't put the papers in fast enough so I would have to start all over. Or, it would accidentally take two papers with it. Each of these files was, on average, 40 pages each, so how would you feel if everything was going great for the first 27 pages, but then skips just one page! Now you would understand my struggles. It was tear-able, just one big paper mess. Fortunately, I managed to get through it without becoming too frustrated. Below I paused to take a selfie (when no one was around) of the beloved printer when I thought I 'broke it'. I awkwardly walked away after that, and when I came back later it was working perfectly fine, so thank you printer gods!

However, the day perked up when I got to observe a patient go in for an MRI brain scan. This patient was part of the Structural and Functional Neuroimaging in Patients with Headache Disorders study. A brief refresher that this is the study that utilizes the thermode, the R2-D2-like machine that tests a patient’s threshold to heat pain. The thermode can test for both heat and cold pain, but the study only uses heat pain because of its increased accuracy in reporting pain.  

Back to the MRI, after preliminary scans had been done, now is where the thermode comes back into the picture. A cord attached to the thermode is passed through a hole in the wall and attached to the patient's arm. Over a period of three 7-minute periods of heating then returning to body temperature then back up again, the MRI brain scan captures the activity in the brain throughout the duration. By doing this, we will be able to look at which areas of the brain are active when one is in pain/discomfort as well as the resting state.

Wow, Wednesday!

Dr. Chong told me either today or Thursday would be the day she would take me over to radiology to have one of the radiologists explain to me the process of analyzing an MRI brain scan. So of course, rather than sit around and wait in excitement, I did some more scanning to pass the time.

Finally, the time came and today was going to be the day! Not only that, but the radiologist to review the MRI brain scan with me would be none other than Dr. Chong’s husband...Dr. Chong! I think they met at Mayo. #HospitalRomance When I muster up the courage, I’ll ask for more details about how they met. I just didn’t think it would be appropriate to ask about their relationship when he was probably taking time out of his busy schedule to explain MRI things to some intern.

We walked into a room that was almost completely dark except for the light coming from multiple computer screens displaying various brain images. I’m sure I said wow in amazement about a million times...in my head, of course. I know I nodded a lot as he went through the thorough process of assessing a patient. The patient we were reviewing had a hemorrhage on the right side of the frontal lobe and previously suffered from severe headaches. The task for radiologists is to find the cause via a CT scan and various sequences of MRI brain scans, each of which focuses on a different aspect of the brain. I admit, I never realized the crazy amount of work that goes into finding the diagnosis for just one patient. When they say they look for all possible causes, they look at ALL possible causes. Medical history, family history, medications, lifestyle, occupation, basically anything related to one’s health they’ll look at. I found it super fascinating! And even after getting all this information, Dr. Chong (the radiologist) told me they still haven’t found the cause of her hemorrhage yet. Because of this, they’re going to wait three months and have her come back in for more scans of her recovery. Maybe then they’ll be able to discover what caused her hemorrhage.

And the brain scans were just as thorough! There was a coronal view (front of the brain to the back), sagittal view (left side of the brain to the back), and axial view (top of the brain to the beginning of the neck). A different scan showed all the arteries in the brain for Dr. Chong (the radiologist) said a possible cause could’ve been a rupture in one of the arteries in which the clot could’ve traveled up into the brain. There was a scan of the veins, too! Radiologists have to know the names of every single vein and artery should the situation arise where one would need to be removed, they know the exact aftereffects of this removal. I know this analysis doesn’t really have anything to do with gender-based concussions, but I’m guessing this is the process they go through to analyze any MRI brain scans. The overarching goal would be to find what is causing the problem in order to find a treatment.

For me, this felt like a lot, so I’ve decided to talk about Thursday in a second post so that I don’t break my word on having more than one post a week. Plus, I’ll be starting the new topic of Dr. Chong and the rest of the department’s new office space with pictures provided.  So stay tuned! My kitty thanks you for following along!! :D

Out with the Old, In with the New

Thursday Move!

Though technically, they officially move Friday, I'll say Thursday, since that's the last day of my week. As you may recall, the whole department is moving to a brand new office space with bigger offices and a more accessible conference table.  So I've taken some not-so-good pictures of the new place on my phone. Sadly, you're stuck with them since that's the best I've got. As they settle in during my Week 5, maybe I'll be able to get some good action shots. I warn you, when we visited the room wasn't even finished yet (similar circumstances as the new BASIS, if that helps put things in perspective) and there were still workers there making the final finishing touches. But nonetheless, without further ado I present to you the new office...

The view when standing at the entrance from the hallway
(on the right is Dr. Chong, while on the left is her colleague Dr. Schwedt)

The right side of the room (if you were still standing at the door)

The left side of the room (again, if standing at the door)

The view from opposite end of the room (that door is the entrance I was referring to)

One of the individual offices (there are four total!)

Well, that marks the end of my Week 4. My revised proposal is still in the works, so bear with me. I hope everyone else's weeks have been going well, and I'll see you all, bushy-eyed and bright-tailed, for Week 5! ;D

QUICK ANNOUNCEMENT #1!

Hi all! I just wanted to notify my readers that I'm officially slightly tweaking my project. As you may or may not have noticed, the "Sports-related" part has been removed from my title. In order to increase enrollment of participants into Dr. Chong's studies, the department has agreed that having more general criteria for the cause of the concussion might bring in more volunteers. Therefore, I have found that my research will be a better match with hers if I do the same. I'll be revising my proposal in order to focus less on the sports aspect. Fortunately, I think my end goal remains the same. I aim to look for gender-based differences in concussions. I haven't found anything yet, but I'm really looking forward to the rest of the weeks we have together! Thanks for hanging with me and stayed tuned for my official Week 3 post!! :)

You Print I Scan

Wow, here we are again! It seemed like just yesterday Week 3 had begun. This week may not be as exciting as the previous weeks, but I can definitely tell you that I’m getting the full intern experience. I apologize in advance for my lack of pictures. After you read about my week, you'll understand that there wasn't anything too picture-worthy. Now presenting the week overview:

Monday Miracles

I was provided some relief when I found out President’s Day was a federal holiday, so no internship for me! Along with binge watching Friends, this day off also gave me time to start making the changes in my proposal that I talked about in my update post.

Wake Up, Wednesday!

It made me feel bad for ever laughing at Chandler Bing’s job as a...well, I still don’t know, but something to do with numbers. Yes siree, that was me, scoring more questionnaires and putting them in a spreadsheet. It’s a very big spreadsheet, I should take a picture of it some time to show you all. Oh, but then later I was given the awesome responsibility of double checking numbers. I was able to catch 3 or so mistakes, so basically I saved the data. You’re welcome!

TGI Thursday

I made it to the last day of the internship week, but there was nothing there to prepare me for the massive amounts of scanning I would be doing. Thank goodness the printer was in a room nearby, so I didn’t have to walk that far.

Ooh, story time! I was in the printer room waiting for some copies to print. In the copy room, there are also four desks in the room where people work. One woman at her desk turned to look at me and asked, “So are you a visiting doctor, Dr. Carlson?” I had to politely say that I was not a doctor, just an intern to Dr. Chong. I was super flattered that she thought I was a doctor. Dr. Carlson! It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

Then for the rest of the day, it was a mix of going to the printer to scanning subject’s files than returning to the computer to label each file (0393-1-001, 0393-1-002, etc.). Tedious work, but I was glad to be of service to Dr. Chong. Now, one need only find the file on the computer rather than rifle through a bunch of papers.

Part of the reason for putting these files into the computer is for Dr. Chong to be more organized for their move next week into a bigger office with more space. Her current office is like the old BASIS, so I understand why she's so excited to move. This brings me to my next point. Because I'll be helping the department move next week, I probably won't have anything new to bring to the table, so I just thought I'd warn you in advance. I'll keep you in the loop about how the changes in my proposal going. See you next week!

Concussion Discussion (Pt. I)

Welcome back, my blogging friends!

As promised, I am writing an additional post to better explain the weekly happenings. Similar to last week, I will provide a brief overview from Monday and Wednesday’s internship days, then I’ll summarize the list of studies that Dr. Chong is performing or assisting in.

Monday, Monday, Monday!

We had another Department of Neurology meeting, and of course, I got lost. When I arrived at 8:56 AM, Dr. Chong had already left for the meeting, leaving me a note saying it was in the same room as last time. This isn’t helpful if I don’t remember how we got there. So after wandering around for a couple minutes, panicking only on the inside, I had the bright idea of going to the lobby’s information desk. Success! I made it to the meeting, 10 minutes late, but still in one piece. And that's my snippet of independence for you!

Discussion in the meeting was most of the same stuff as last week, the need for more people to enroll and the status of all the studies. Then I spent the rest of the day putting the scores from questionnaires onto a spreadsheet. A pretty uneventful day. Have some knowledge: The data from the spreadsheet is usually triple-checked!

Halfway There Wednesday!

I now see the value of these triple-checks for when I came in this morning, Dr. Chong had gone over my work and discovered some numbers in the wrong boxes. Thank goodness those were caught or else the results would've been a bit inaccurate. Lesson: It's always helpful to have another pair of eyes proofread one's work to minimize errors.

Today I also sat in on the first patient for the new study comparing recovery times between males and females post-concussion. She was an 18-year-old healthy control. The questionnaires were the same ones used for the study comparing PTH and chronic migraine. Read on to learn more about the different studies that I've been mentioning throughout my posts!

Now that I’ve covered what I’ve done this week, I will list Dr. Chong's studies and give a quick summary of each:

1. A Magnetic Resonance Imaging-Based Classifier to Accurately Diagnose Persistent Posttraumatic Headache and to Differentiate it from Chronic Migraine
1. Principal Investigator (the person in charge of the study): Todd Schwedt & Colleagues
2. Funded by the Department of Defense
3. Because of the difficulty for clinicians to diagnose whether a patient has post-traumatic headaches or migraines, this study will hopefully find out whether symptoms and brain MRI findings can help distinguish the two
4. GOAL: Determine if symptoms and brain MRI results can help to differentiate people with post-traumatic headaches from people with migraine and from people without headaches

2. Sex-Specific Profiles of White Matter Repair Following a Concussion
1. Principal Investigator: Dr. Catherine Chong & Colleagues
2. Also funded by the Department of Defense
3. GOAL: Compare male and female recovery times following a concussion using MRI brain results

3. Structural and Functional Neuroimaging in Patients with Headache Disorders
1. Principal Investigator: Dr. Catherine Chong & Colleagues
2. Funded by Mayo Clinic AZ
3. This research study is being done to better understand whether changes that are seen in the brain in people with migraines are also seen in people with chronic headache disorders (similarities and differences between MRI & sensory testing)
4. GOAL: Improve ability to diagnose and treat these conditions

4. Functional Networks in Migraine
1. Principal Investigator: Dr. Schwedt and Colleagues
2. We are conducting this research to study adults with migraine. The aim is to study possible effects of migraine on the way the brain functions.
3. This study will help us understand why some patients with migraine are more sensitive to light, noise, and touch
1. It may also help determine why some patients with migraine transform from having infrequent headaches to having very frequent headaches
4. Funded by the National Institutes of Health
5. MRI & sensory testing (cold & heat to determine pain thresholds)
6. Groups: Chronic migraine, episodic migraine, healthy
7. GOAL: improvements in ability to diagnose and treat migraine

Alright, that's all for now. I hope that helped clear some things up. And certainly comment below if you still have questions. Thanks for continuing to follow along, and I'll see you in tomorrow's post!