EEG Lab: Giver of Death

This semester I am taking Behavioral Neurobiology, which is one of the coolest classes I’ve ever taken. We had to write three papers, and my second paper was on the same topic that my teacher, Dr. Larson, researches. Thanks to not procrastinating and my amazing TA, Ann, it turned out to be a pretty good paper and I was invited to work in the lab because of it!

I was really excited, and it’s proved to be just as cool as I ever thought it would be. Working on a research team is amazing. I love going to lab meetings. They make me feel like a legitimate researcher, even though right now I’m just a helper.

I work in an EEG lab, which measures the electrical activity in the brain. We study error processing.

Now, you have to understand the title of this post. Last year I did two EEGs for class credit. They. Were. Awful.
I thought it would be really cool, and it kind of was, but it was also miserable.

Here’s a picture of me with the EEG net on. Doesn’t it look great? This was taken the first time I did an EEG. The net is soaked in salt water, to improve the conductivity, and then they squirt salt water under most of the sensors. So when the net was taken off, it looked like I had crimped my hair on the top half, and not the bottom.
(The first time, I had a date right after, and I had to run home as fast as I could to take a shower. Haha.)

Then, I had to do a Stroop task. I’m sure you’ve all seen something like it. Here’s a picture of a regular Stroop task. Usually, you say the color, and not the word out loud.

The task that I took was a little different. It would either say "color" or "word". For example, if it said "word"… BLUE. I would press the button for blue, but if it said "color" before the word popped up, I would say red.
It was hard, it was long, and it didn’t help that I had to look at really weird pictures between every trial.

Anyway, the one that I administer is not that bad. It’s a flanker task, which looks like this:
<<><< or <<<<<

But it’s still not fun for the participants. I can’t wait to see the results though. Here I am, the giver of EEGs. The giver of 90 minutes of flankers, PASATs, and blood pressure tests.

But if you go to BYU and want to make $15, it’s not that bad.  :)