Hola amigos,
Yes! I'm currently in the U.K, and yes! I'm doing my internship here and this week will be my final week. It all started with an offer by the psychology department declaring that second year students proceeding to final year are given an opportunity to undergo an internship not only in Malaysia, but also in the U.K campus.
Considering it is the first time this offer has ever announced to students, I had interest of applying. There were terms and conditions, that potential supervisors in the U.K should be independently contacted with mutual agreement to let me be their research assistant. Once settled, the declaration and proposal form was to be sent to the head of the psychology department for full sponsored funding, and results should be out within 2 weeks time.
It was difficult at first, merely because while I was skimming through their research backgrounds, everything was in-depth under the scope of neuroscience -a bonus for me as it is my field of interest, however all required advanced skills and knowledge which I haven't formerly possessed. At the very last minute, an email of acceptance from a lecturer in Nottingham, U.K, Dr. Riikka was received and I immediately sent my CV for brief introduction. I was notified that the psychology department was only willing to cater one student for the U.K internship application as there was limited fundings which was understandable. And yes, alhamdullillah of course I felt absolutely lucky to be accepted.
For part 1 of the entry, I'll be only sharing the important bits that is what is my internship basically all about.
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The concern of the study involves the understanding of language acquisition between adults compared to children/infants. We have the primary concept that adults have more difficulty to learn a new language (L2) besides their own native language (L1) -children learn faster. Therefore, Dr. Eleonore and Dr. Riikka are interested in investigating the roles in certain parts of the brain areas that is associated with language learning in adults. The main hypothesis revolves to the analysation of learning processing of explicit and implicit memory in the declarative and procedural memory systems respectively. From this observation, the differences regarding to language learning can be traced back.
The two types of memory systems rely on distinctive parts of the brain -procedural memory focusing on premotor areas which are involved in motor skill learning whilst declarative memory relying on medial-temporal lobe and the prefrontal cortex -characterised by late-developing processes such as working memory and attention. They hypothesised the motor areas such as the DLPFC contributes to implicit learning and that the dorsolateral prefrontal contribute to explicit learning. Both memory systems interact during learning.
According to Dr. Eleonore Smalle based on their recent study, they disrupted the declarative memory system during language learning by applying Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) repetitively over the left Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC) and it was found that the disruption resulted in an improvement in adult's implicit learning towards novel word-forms (Small et al., 2017).
credit: shirah volmer MD
The finding supports the hypothesis whether the existence of competition between the two memory system play an important role in terms of language, skill acquisition and its associated variation. Therefore, the repetitive TMS gives an insight of further investigations towards the hypothesis underlying language learning in adults and its contribution.
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I was involved in almost all of the procedural experimentation of this study. The whole experiment takes roughly 2 hours per participant and three steps were made. First, in which participants are required to undergo an executive functioning task to measure their pre-performance in terms of individual differences in intelligence -digit span task, semantic fluency and wisconsin card sorting task. Second, the attachment of EEG (electroencephalogram) cap to the head which involves measurement setup, insertion of electrode gels into the scalp, and TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) to find the motor threshold of the individual and perform a theta burst which lasted for 30 seconds on their head -either on the DLPFC or at the vertex as a control group. The participant would then be exposed to a 20-minute sequence of syllables while watching a documentary to keep them busy. Once finished, a break will be given and they'll continue with the computer tasks before completing the experiment.
Recording the brain signals exhibited by a participant while they listen to the speech syllables for 20 minutes. I was responsible to monitor any possible noises (eye-blinks, sleep, muscle movements or channel disruptions)
An example of how the participants undergo the process. The small holes you see on the EEG cap located on his head is the electrodes filled with gel to signal their brain activity.
Two months and a half was not enough to grasp the whole idea and see the end result of the experiment. But Dr. Eleonore and Dr. Riikka have taught me almost 80% of the inputs involved -using excel to analyse the data for behavioural and executive functioning tasks, practically attach the electrodes on the right hand muscle, index finger and wrist, left side of forehead and nose not to forget being trained how to insert the gels onto their scalp. Instruct verbal instructions to participants without their supervision -believing I was capable to conduct and communicate.
The final month was more focused on learning to use Matlab software -observing and analyse specifically for the EEG data analysis alone. It was easy to understand, Dr. Riikka explained very well on how it should work and I managed to pace through the idea of what may have gone wrong, possible alterations and update records. We know that the datas were never going to be settled before this week ends -not even coding can fasten the pace because each data requires supervision and changes based on its output.
The challenges in the whole experiment were dealing with the sensitivity of participants to the surrounding temperature. Two patients have fainted, and although our lab was fully controlled to avoid hazards, some individuals health is vulnerable to the impact of TMS (Transcranial Magnetic stimulation). It is suppose to disrupt a certain area in your brain, and may cause several discomfort such as eye-twitches, a tap against the skull and twitches in your face generally.
Regardless, Dr. Eleonore and I took quick actions and so far I'm proud of what we have achieved so far. If you are interested to know more about their previous study click HERE to have a look.
Part 2 will be everything about the experiences of interning -my supervisors, colleagues and friends I've met along the way. I'm very grateful for everything and I am satisfied with my experiences and the knowledge I attained here.
