Participation in a Psych/Neuro Study - Neurogenetics, Hariri Lab

I participated in the Hariri Lab neurogenetics study (made popular by the flyers around campus bearing the slogan, "DO YOU HAVE A BRAIN?". It was one of the more interesting, comprehensive studies I've participated in, and am excited to hear about discoveries they make.

The first day, Dr. Hariri interviewed me on a wide range of topics to assess personal experience and personality traits - everything from my lifestyle choices to events from my past. I feel like what he learned about me makes him about as knowledgeable about me as one of my closest friends. I just hope that my information is safe!

Look, it's my sagittal slices of my brain!

The second day, Dr. Hariri tested me in a variety of mental tasks including working memory tasks (a particularly frustrating one for me was listening to a stream of numbers and adding the last two numbers I heard - so easy to get confused!), tests of mental math and vocabulary, and even assessment of my pattern recognition skills. I walked out of there feeling pretty dumb, but I didn't get any calls about having a learning disability, so hopefully I'm alright...

The third day, I went in for an MRI scan, where I performed simple number recognition tasks and matching tasks. This lasted for about an hour, and I'm not sure I'd want to do it again - I had to stay extremely still, the MRI machine made lots of loud noise, and I started feeling pretty claustrophobic.

Then before I left, I spit into a sequencing kit for 23andme. So out of all of this, I got a cash payment, an MRI scan of my brain, and a free 23andme account. Overall very worthwhile.

You should consider participating as well! Studies like this need a large database of subjects to come to concrete conclusions to link genetics and behavior/brain characteristics (which are never truly concrete because of things like epigenetics that are contributed by our environment - the nurture side of development). Click here if "you have a brain."