The MIRAGE lab - Malaysia campus

Next month we have a MIRAGE system winging its way over to the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus. It will be traveling over with new Ph.D. student Vrushant Lakhlani who is going to be working with Dr. Kirsten McKenzie. They plan to combine MIRAGE multisensory illusions with EEG. EEG, or Electroencephalography, measures electrical brain activity from electrodes placed on the scalp so we can find out what is going on in the brain when participants are exposed to MIRAGE multisensory illusions.

Dr. Kirsten McKenzie studied both Psychology and the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, before completing an MSc(Hons) and working as a Research Assistant at the Research Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience. She then moved to the UK to conduct research at Glasgow Caledonian University, and was awarded an Inter-Disciplinary Doctoral Training Scholarship to carry out her Ph.D. in multi-sensory integration and spatial frames of reference at the University of Nottingham (UK), Institute of Neuroscience. Dr. McKenzie then spent three years as Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, UK, investigating perceptual integration and tactile illusions, and is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Nottingham's Malaysia Campus.

Ph.D. student Vrushant Lakhlani, originally from Leicester, studied at Bangor University where in 2006 he completed his BSc in Psychology with Neuropsychology and then an MSc  in Foundations of Clinical Neuropsychology. Vrush is moving out to Malaysia to start his Ph.D. in September this year (providing his visa gets sorted soon).

Do you suffer arthritis?

We are looking for participants with arthritis in the Nottingham area to get in touch to take part in our experiment. If you or someone you know are interested please contact Helen Gilpin on helen.gilpin@nottingham.ac.uk

Summer Scientist Week sucess

Summer scientist weeks was a great very successful as we had two separate MIRAGE systems running and managed to try our illusions on well over 100 children. 

The next event we are preparing for is the British Science Festival in Bradford on the 14th and 15th of September. There a MIRAGE will be situated in the Atrium of the Richmond building from 10-4 each day and visitor will be able to have a go at our finger stretching, hand swapping, extra hand and disappearing hand illusions - so please try to come along.

In other news another MIRAGE publication is now in press in Current Biology. This one uses the disappearing hand trick to cause participants to 'lose a limb'. It is the first paper of our newest member Helen Gilpin as it was the experiment she ran for her undergraduate project. Well done Helen! Details of how to get hold of the paper will be posted soon.

Summer Scientist Week

Today is the beginning of 2011 Summer Scientist Week at the University of Nottingham in which 4 - 11-year-olds take part in fun experiments, learning about science, having fun and helping with research. The MIRAGE system is one of the fun activities on offer and we have people there all week interacting with the children and showing them our cool illusions. we'll have another post about how they got on at the end of the week.

It has been a while since the last post because I have been in Malaysia we have a MIRAGE moving the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus - more about that in the next post!

Osteoarthritis Grant Commences

Following on from the recent work we carried out on pain reduction in Osteoarthritis (published in Rheumatology) our Dunhill Medical Trust grant commenced today.

Helen Gilpin, the new Research Assistant working on the grant

We are pleased to announce that we have a new research assistant, Helen Gilpin, who has just achieved a first class honours degree at Nottingham University. She will be recruiting participants and running the studies for the grant as well as constructing an online version of the study, for which more details will be available here shortly.

June Monthly Illusion - Finger Stretching

A student at the University of Nottingham having her finger stretched

This month’s (and our first) monthly illusion is finger stretching. As well as being a popular trick for our public engagement events, this illusion has been used in two of our most recent publications. The first was published in Perception, in which we stretched the finger before detaching the fingertip whilst investigating agency and ownership. The second appears in Rheumatology in which we found that finger stretching (along with finger shrinking) could reduce pain in osteoarthritis. 

Figure 1: SCR (Skin Conductance Response) from a 9 year old boy when the finger is gently pulled without stretching (white) and then with stretching (red). When we are shocked or scared then we sweat a little more than normal and these tiny changes can be measured by electrophysiological equipment that we have in the lab. The graph above captures a peak in skin conductance (increase in sweat) on the index and middle fingers of the left hand when the right hand is being stretched.

 

The illusion is simple but effective; the experimenter gently pulls on the fingertip whilst the image is stretched giving a very strong illusion that the finger is really elongating. Reactions to the illusion are often quite striking; we have even had grown adults shriek and flinch despite knowing that nothing is actually happening to their finger. The graph in Figure 1 shows skin conductance response to the illusion. Many participants who take part also report that their finger is too short when it is then ‘un-stretched’ and is in fact normal size.

An important part of the illusion is that it is multisensory. The experimenter gently pulls on the tip of the finger (Figure 2) when the image is stretched so that what you feel from your finger matches what you see happening to it. This makes the illusion very effective.

Figure 2: This shows a finger of an arthritis patient being stretched. The experimenter is gently pulling on the finger tip whilst the image is stretched

Arthritis Project update - RA shortlisting

Today we shortlisted candidates for the RA position on our exciting new project funded by Dunhill Medical Trust expanding on our work recently published in Rheumatology in which we demonstrated analgesic effects of multisensory illusions in a group of osteoarthritis sufferers.We hope to be interviewing the candidates later this week so we can start the project as soon as possible.

The new project will also  involve online experiments so that everyone can take part (we'll have separate experiments for those with and without osteoarthritis). News about those experiments will be posted on this blog, so watch this space!



Other blog news

Roger and I intend to start posting a monthly illusion on the blog in which we tell you about one of the illusions that we use in the lab including videos so you can see it in action.

I would also like to draw your attention to the updated News Articles page as I have added a video and more links.