I've got first-day-of-school high-- I'm pumped to do EVERYTHING-- right NOW!
Okay, so I have a long road ahead of me. My main concerns right now have to be the literature review, and a mock-PhD studentship proposal which the head of the course says basically has to be above 90% (which I didn't even know existed in this country) or it doesn't pass.
The collective outlook on PhD studentships is rather grim. I didn't know until today how nearly impossible it is to get one in this country-- it may even be worse than the US. However, my pessimistic view is, it doesn't matter how good your proposal is-- the professor will take you if you've worked for them. All philosophy aside, the PhD proposal is a substantial part of my grade, so it doesn't matter what the reality is. I have to write it and that's that.
So here is the work I have to accomplish by 5 May 2011:
1) Write a 6-8000 word critical literature review
2) Write a nearly perfect PhD studentship proposal (Kevin assures us this will be the hardest thing we do on the course, and I believe him)
3) Create an experimental study different from the thesis and write a 3000 word article
4) Create a professional webpage, other goodies for a portfolio
On top of those things, I have to:
5) Conduct the pilot and final experiments for my thesis
6) Design a scientific poster for the BPS conference in May (since I foolishly signed up to do it)
What have I accomplished so far?
1) I have gathered about 50 articles and read about 10 of them in-depth, and have made notes on those 10 for the "hallucination, schizotypy and schizophrenia" section of my literature review. Today the head of the course said we should be about halfway through with the whole damn thing, which was NEWS TO ME-- I felt an icicle plunge down my esophagus, but it evaporated when I asked the rest of the class (after the head of the course left, of course) what they had done and they expressed that they hadn't even done as much as I, and that goes for the non-slackers like me, too. ;)
2) I have hardly even begun to conceptualize what question I could possibly pursue for 3 solid years of PhD research, but I had better get on it! I am thinking of something to do with the relationship between imagery and perception, which is my new favorite topic right now.
3) I e-mailed the head of the course with my idea for the random experimental study that must be different from my thesis.
4) Create a webpage? I'll leave that 'til the week before it's due.
5) I'm running my pilot on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week! And I have renewed inspiration for the topic and I will not fail my adviser!
6) I have a basic layout/color scheme for the conference poster, have maybe read 3 background articles, but have not put my findings down on paper yet, except in the form of the abstract I submitted in order to get the go-ahead from the British Psychological Society to make the poster.
What do I plan to do?
Forgive my ramblings, but it makes me feel good to put all this in writing-- I am too social for a diary, too verbose for a twitter, and simply too disorganized NOT to do it. I give you my permission to back out at any time.
1) Since I am studying the relationship between visual imagery and visual perception for my literature review, I should cover these basic points:
INTRO: What is imagery? What do we know about imagery from the last 10 years of research since Marlene Behrmann published her review in 2000? Have we answered her questions and others that have been raised about imagery? (i.e. what is the role of the right and left hemispheres in imagery? Why aren't vivid images/hallucinations confused with reality [in normals]? Why does imagery activate different brain areas than other internal representations for other cognitive tasks [such as visual working memory tasks]?)
BODY: The relationship between imagery and perception as evidenced by neuropsychology (representational neglect, cortical blindness), psychopatholy (schizophrenia), and normative studies (schizotypy, imagery-vividness, fMRI) in the last 10 years. What parts of the brain are involved in imagery and which hemispheres. Addressing the questions Behrmann and others set out 10 years ago.
CONCLUSIONS: What we know now that we didn't know then. What questions have we answered. What questions do we still have.
2) I am thinking of designing a series of experiments on the relationship between imagery and perception. One very recent study has found that vividness of mental imagery is greater in people related to schizophrenics than other people who are not related. Which makes weird sense since these people are all normal and have never reported any symptoms of schizophrenia. Which just goes to show that imagery could have a genetic component. Also, imagery is related to schizophrenia in general, NOT hallucinations. Imagery is greater in schizophrenics regardless of whether they have ever hallucinated. Schizotypal people in the normal population report higher imagery capabilities over others, as well. What if I were able to conduct a series of experiments, as follows:
a. test huge number of normal people for high/low imagery and high/low schizotypal traits using various behavioral/self-report methods. Form groups of hi-imagery/lo-schizotypy, hi-imagery/hi-schizotypy, lo-imagery/hi-schizotypy (is there such a thing?), lo-imagery/lo-schizotypy. Look at brains of people who score in the upper and lower 20th percentile on behavioral/self-report measures, using fMRI while they perform both perception and imagery tasks.
b. test people who are related to schizophrenics for high/low imagery and high/low schizotypal traits. Have them ALL do fMRI tasks.
c. test schizophrenics for high/low imagery. Look at brains.
d. compare brains between all these different people. learn more about imagery/perception than anyone else ever.
Jesus, I have no idea what I'm doing. Is this an impossible study? How much does it cost to use an fMRI excessively? Really? I guess I could come up with a different study... but I'll figure that out later.
3) The random experimental study is going to be a blast if the head of the course OKs it! I came up with it in about five minutes after he gave us the assignment. Here it is:
Testing to see if eye movements during reading are different on a few different levels of 2 groups: I will have a hi-imagery group and a lo-imagery group. Each group will be assessed as either "readers" or "non-readers" based on whether they like to read for pleasure, and I will also chart how often these people like to read for fun (by week/month). I will give various behavioral/self-report measures for this. Once I have data for about 50 subjects, I will take the upper and lower 10 for imagery, and will ask those people to come back for part 2 of the study. They will be asked to read an excerpt of Harry Potter for 5 minutes, and an excerpt from something really boring, like a refrigerator manual. Maybe I'll have people read for 10 mins each if I can get the credit hours approved. At any rate, I will track eye movements for both groups under both conditions and see if they differ.
And that's it, really. Seems simple enough. I could pop that out in 2 weeks if I'm good enough! Voila!
OK, so I should create a basic plan for tomorrow. That should be simple enough, yeah? Just the work I have to do tomorrow.
FIRST-- go running, duh!
SECOND-- look up more articles on the relationship between schizophrenia and imagery. Maybe 2 or 3 more. If I get those in record time (before lunch), I'll write up a summary of the findings for hallucinations/schizotypy/schizophrenia in a few paragraphs and have a rough draft of that part out of the way!
THIRD-- continue on to cortical blindness or normative fMRI studies, whichever suits my fancy next. If I get 2-3 articles on whichever other topic that is, I will either brainstorm more ideas for the PhD proposal, or work on my poster.
Do those sound like good goals for one day? Because I haven't the slightest clue. I seem to have a very warped perception of time, which moves about 10 times faster than normal if I'm working on something!
And that is my spring term in a nutshell.
Goodbye, life!
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