This past week at the Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Research Center has been extremely fun and interesting! Monday was the slowest day as we spent most of the day creating the script for our upcoming experiments. This means that we were creating a sort of step by step guide for our research so that if anyone were to join the research team they would easily be able to help out with an experiment. This also helps us in the future as our first experiment is Wednesday the 25th and we have to have at least an outline of what we were doing. Throughout the week revised the script as needed as we ran through a couple of practice experiments. After that Mahima and I worked on a presentation that we would be giving later in the week. This was a sort of stressful as we would presenting all the work our team had been doing to the director of our program, the director and another similar program in Florida, and all the PhDs in the pediatrics department. After we finished that up and did some mock presentations to our team, the day was done.
Tuesday was fascinating as we finally got to use our optoelectric (camera-based) system and see what post-processing looked like. To start this off we went down to the lab to make sure our camera set up was effective and collect some random data to make sure everyone was well practiced in collecting and processing. I was the lucky member of the team who got to get decked out in all of our marker balls and run through the movements of our experiment as I am (apparently) small enough to represent one of the children we will be testing on in the future. After getting some data we headed back up to the offices to do some processing. This involves going through a frame by frame video of sorts and marking each ball. Although it is a fairly tedious process it proved to be very fun as it was a sort of connect the dots puzzle, with the end product being a pretty accurate visual of our motion. Before I knew the day was done and I was nearly halfway through my second to last week.
Processing
Covered in sensors!
Wednesday morning we got to attend another journal club where we got to see a grad student working with the pediatrics team presented on the effects of arm movement during locomotor training. It proved to be an important part of recovery as it helps the brain make connections between arm movement and recovery. After that, we headed to lunch, then went back to the lab for more practice. This time we were simply making sure we could sync up our recordings from the optoelectric system and the IMU (inertial measurement unit) systems. We had some technical difficulties but were cut short as we had to attend presentations from all the PhDs working with the pediatrics team, which were of course very interesting.
As for Thursday, we spent practically the whole day in the lab working out the kinks of our experiment and making sure we could sync up our systems. We also were able to do a full run through of our experiment system with Xsens the IMU system and continue revising the script. After some practice, we all headed to the boardroom for me and Mahima’presentation. Luckily it went very well and everyone on our team was pleasantly surprised. We also got to head down to Fourth Street so I could do some site seeing and we could take advantage of some free pizza.
Fourth Street
Friday was very similar to Thursday as we spent most of the day practicing our experiments, this time with both systems. We figured out the optimal order of the movement and how we can collect data from the two systems simultaneously. After editing the script some more we are pretty much ready for the experiments ahead. Of course we will continue practice up until our first experiment but for now we have a solid outline of what the study ahead will look like and I am beyond excited.
As for activities outside of work Noah and I spent the weekend cramming in as much as we could as this will be our last weekend in this beautiful city. Friday we had plans to got the carnival but ended up being caught in a severe storm, nevertheless, we had fun in the rain. Saturday we went over the walking bridge over to Indiana and got to enjoy some popsicles and ice cream, then headed to Goodwill for our fill of thrift shopping. Sunday we went to the mall for further shopping, then went down to the pool to enjoy a concert put on by our previous host mom, Brigid. It is unbelievable how fast these past five weeks have gone by but as the saying goes, time flies when you’re having fun!
Walking Bridge
Lakeside (Swimming Pool)
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