archways | ARCHES Initiative

Research Update: December 2019

By meb16 | Published December 6, 2019

Our Research Updates in Archways give a snapshot of the Rice ARCHES Initiative’s current work, research progress, and future directions.

Connecting with Our Community

This month Dr. Angie LeRoy, a post-doctoral Research Fellow on our team in the Department of Psychological Sciences, discusses community engagement.

In Project CHROMA, we are recruiting individuals over the age of 70 and/or diagnosed with Mild Cognitive Impairment to participate in our study of how music creativity can benefit cognition and social/emotional wellbeing. As part of our efforts to integrate the community with our research goals, we make a concerted effort to enhance our visibility at community events.

We feel that connecting with community members is important, not only to recruit community members to participate in our study, but also to give back to our community through communicating empirical research findings. In doing so, we hope to educate the public about the most recent research in the area of health psychology, with a specific focus on preventing poor health outcomes among our aging population.

*Image: Dr. LeRoy presents at the Annual Rice Alzheimer’s Buddies Symposium.*

Recently, I did a public educational talk about Alzheimer’s Disease and Caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s, at the annual Rice Alzheimer’s Buddies Symposium. I also discussed strategies that we may be able to use to slow down the progression to Alzheimer’s by early intervention. For example, through the use of music—as we are doing with the Rice ARCHES Initiative.

We received positive feedback from the audience, which consisted of people of all ages and demographics. After the talk, some nursing students who were inspired by hearing about our work, approached our information booth to ask more about the study and inquire about volunteering to work on the project.

Moving forward, our team will continue to prioritize connecting with community members to enhance our visibility and spread awareness!

*Image: Team members engage with the community at the BMED Lab’s information booth.*

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Tools of the Trade I

By meb16 | Published November 19, 2019

Our “Tools of the Trade” series in Archways highlights the research technology and methodologies used by the Rice ARCHES Initiative.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

This month, Melia Bonomo from the Department of Physics & Astronomy introduces us to neuroimaging in Project CHROMA.

In Project CHROMA, we’re interested in understanding how a music intervention can affect cognition. To study this, we need to be able to image the brain and quantify changes that occur as a result of participating in the creative arts.

There are numerous potential neuroimaging methods — the decision about which one to use depends on the required length and time scales of the application (see image below from Sejnowski et al., 2014). Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a non-invasive method that has been widely used to study patients with mild cognitive impairment, in order to both characterize brain changes and predict clinical outcomes.

*Image: Comparison of neuroimaging methods from T Sejnowski, P Churchland, and J Movshon (2014), Putting big data to good use in neuroscience. Nat Neurosci **17,** 1440–1441 doi:10.1038/nn.3839*

For our project, we are utilizing functional MRI (fMRI) to measure changes in blood-oxygen levels across the brain, which is a proxy for functional brain activity. It is important to note that neurovascular coupling (the relationship between local neural activity and changes in blood flow) is an ongoing area of research — we recommend this post from Nature Education that explores the signal that fMRI is measuring in more detail.

During Project CHROMA, neuroimaging is carried out at the Houston Methodist Translational Imaging Center on a Philips Ingenia 3T scanner. There are three parts to the imaging: (1) a high-resolution structural MRI scan for anatomical reference, (2) an fMRI scan while the participants are completing a cognitive task, and (3) an fMRI scan while participants are resting awake. We will then compare each subject’s functional brain activity data obtained from fMRI before and after the music intervention.

Check back in the coming weeks to learn more about the in-scanner task, why we’re interested in resting state imaging, and how we analyze the data!

For more in-depth reading:

ML Ries, CM Carlsson, HA Rowley, MA Sager, CE Gleason, S Asthana, and SC Johnson (2008), Magnetic resonance imaging characterization of brain structure and function in mild cognitive impairment: a review. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 56(5): 920-934.