Study Team Sees Success with Online Recruitment Portal
Before clicking the link to read this article, your brain prepared for the subtle finger movement that brought you here.
It was a series of events that scientists do not fully understand, which means that when it goes awry — as is the case in a disease like Parkinson’s — physicians are unable to treat the issue.
“We’re trying to understand how different brain areas that control upper-extremity movement communicate with able-bodied individuals to prepare to move,” says Trudy Adjei, a third-year biomedical engineering PhD student at Northwestern University. “We are particularly interested in how different types of movements affect this brain communication.”
Adjei and Kelsey Wright, a fourth-year neuroscience PhD student at Northwestern, are members of the Neuroimaging and Motor Control Laboratory in the Physical Therapy and Human Movement Sciences Department. The lab is particularly interested in understanding the neural mechanisms of movement and movement disorders following injuries to the nervous system.
Part of their ongoing study recruitment efforts involve The New Normal, a web-based platform that uses lay-friendly language and is primed for mobile devices. Roughly 50 percent of their study participants have joined the study via the online portal, which was launched to increase awareness of and participation in health research in the Chicago region. The clinical trial involves three in-person visits and several range-of-motion arm tests.
“Understanding how the healthy brain communicates prior to movement will move us a step closer to understanding how the brain works, and subsequently, we can then begin to fully understand how disease affects this healthy brain communication,” says Adjei, who is mentored by Physical Therapy and Human Movement Sciences faculty Julius Dewald, PhD, and Jun Yao, PhD. Yao is also advisor to Wright.
The New Normal provided a pool of potential participants — nearly 5,000 and growing — that allows researchers to collect diverse data.
“We would definitely recommend The New Normal to other teams as it’s extremely easy to input your study and specify your inclusion/exclusion criteria,” says Wright.
The New Normal is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and made possible through the collaboration of nine top hospitals and universities: Northwestern University, University of Chicago, Rush, University of Illinois at Chicago, Loyola University Chicago, NorthShore University Health System, Illinois Institute of Technology, Advocate Health Care, and the University of Michigan.
To learn more about Adjei and Wright’s study, please visit their New Normal study page.
Visit The New Normal to learn more about adding your study to portal.
Written by Roger Anderson
