What is fMRI: fMRI is a method of measuring brain activity as people carry out various mental tasks in an MRI scanner.
The CUBIC centre’s MRI scanner is based at Royal Holloway and is a joint venture where Brunel University London researchers also carry out scans.
There are currently two projects looking for participants. Scanning usually takes place on Fridays and behavioural tests on other days.
Please contact using the email address given for the specific studies.
Study 1: Faces and voices in the brain
Aim: We are interested in people’s ability to recognise other persons by their face and voice, and in the brain mechanisms involved in learning new people.
What you will do in this research: This is a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study. You will see images (faces, scenes, objects) and listen to sounds (voices, natural sounds, noise), while we measure your neural activity with the MRI scanner. You will be asked to pay attention to the stimuli and make responses by pressing buttons. You will also be asked to complete several behavioural tasks (to rate face and voice stimuli on various dimensions). Also you will be asked to watch a season of a TV show attentively over the course of 2–3 weeks and complete a number of brief online questionnaires about this show (you can do it at home!).
Time required: Participation will involve 2 scanning session (2h each), 2 behavioural sessions (90 mins each), watching of the TV show (12 episodes x 1h) and the completion of 12 brief online questionnaires (12 x 5 mins), participation will thus require a total of 20 hours. There will be two MRI sessions that will typically take about 2 hours each (in which you will be inside the MRI scanner for about 1 hour and 30 minutes) – one of them will take place before you have watched the TV show, another one after you have watched the TV show. The two behavioural session of 1 hour and 30 minutes will be outside the scanner and on different days.
Compensation: You will receive £120 for participating in all the parts of the study. If you dropout before the final session, you will be reimbursed with £10 for each session you have completed (watching the show and completing the online questionnaires are considered to be one session).
Requirements: You need to (1) be aged between 18 and 35, (2) be native English speaker, (3) be right handed, (4) be able to remove all metal from your body, and (5) have normal or corrected vision and normal hearing.
Contact Olga Korolkova (olga.korolkovabrunel.ac.uk)
Study 2: Brain activities and perceptual skills
Aim: Specifically, researchers are investigating how the brain extracts and encodes information to support object and people perception, visually guided action, and understanding the intentions of others. Further, we aim to understand how malleable these cortical representations are in an individual following training or learning.
What you will do in this research: Participants may choose to participate in one or more of the following experiments
i) performing perceptual behavioral tasks in a testing room (approximately 1 hour) along with questionnaires and other pencil-and-paper tasks.
ii) ii) Performing perceptual tasks in a MRI scanner and structural MRI (approximately 2 hours).
Compensation: You will receive £15 Amazon vouchers.
Requirements: You may qualify for participation if you are between the ages of 18-65, normal to corrected -to- normal vision, no brain injuries, not suffering from dyslexia, and no problem following verbal and written instructions.
Other factors may also affect your enrollment.
For more information or to sign up, please contact us
Email: Psystudies@brunel.ac.uk
Study 3: Perception of facial expressions in the brain using fMRI
Aim: This is an fMRI study investigating how emotions from facial expressions are processed within the brain.
What you will do in this research:
The scanning sessions are divided into ‘runs’ of 3-4 minutes, and the total duration of the experiment will be 1.5 hours. Approximately 1 hour will be spent in the scanner, plus an additional 10-15 minutes to complete the screening forms and ensure it is safe for you to participate.
The project is part of my PhD and has been approved by the College of Health and Life Sciences Research Ethics committee at Brunel University London to run until 06/08/2019.
If you are interested in taking part, we have scanning slots available on:
Friday 16 November
Friday 11 January
Friday 18 January
Friday 25 January
Compensation: You will receive £20 for roughly 1.5 hours of your time.
Contact:
Email: Thomas.Murraybrunel.ac.uk
Tel: 07990072595
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