Brain and Behavior Project Paper

 

 

Two parts to the project

SUBJECT : 

**The treatment and rehabilitation of a person who suffered ischemic stroke

STEP ONE

a. Title– create a working title for the project, and type it at the top of the page.  The title should be derived from the topic stated in Step 1.  It can be a straightforward title or a more creative one.

b. Brain and Behavior Summary– write a brief summary of what you intend to examine regarding the brain and what you will examine for the corresponding behavior. Each of these statements is only a few sentences, and the focus can shift a bit as you learn through your research. See the project video if you need to see an example and further explanation (- for your convivence, I have provided the link below; you can skip to Step 2 in the video).  Please only upload pdfs or MSWord files; I cannot read Apple/Mac documents on my PC.

Please note that the brain and behavior statements are separated in this step for a reason. You need to be able to say in your own words what you are going to examine regarding the brain, which is the primary emphasis, and behavior. Your two statements must make sense, and they have to be aligned (e.g., the example in the video shows a project based on neuronal migration disorders in dyslexia). The brain and behavior connection was clear in this example; the behavioral problems seen in dyslexia (i.e., difficulties with verbal extraction and comprehension etc..) can be directly connected to the brain areas that contain the disorganized cells in the left hemisphere.  Where do you obtain the information to construct a brain and behavior statement?  Look over the abstracts in the three articles that you are required to provide.  If your brain and behavior statements have nothing to do with your articles, that is a huge problem.

c. Research Articles– demonstrate that you have found three empirical research articles that you can use for the project.  The selected articles can be swapped out if you find better ones in the future.  Additionally, you will need at least four for the final project.

APA formatted References- The three references must be typed in APA format at the bottom of the page (see the video for an example).

First Pages of the Actual Articles- You must supply a clearly visible screenshot of the first page of each of the articles.  Please note that I need to see the actual first page showing title of the article, the names of the investigators, the abstract of the article etc… It is not acceptable to simply copy and paste the abstract into a MSWord doc, for example.  Additionally, it is not acceptable to provide a link.  When you attempt to give me an EBSCO host link, I have to go through several extra steps, and often I still cannot see the article.  It is your responsibility to provide an image of each article.  Normally, in the face-to-face environment, you would copy the first page of the article and supply a hard copy.

STEP TWO

There are three parts to Step 3 (i.e., two article summaries in table format, two 1st pages of the articles, and one peer interaction).

I.  SUMMARIZE ARTICLES (16pts)- Using the following template, select two of your empirical research articles and summarize them using your own words.  The two articles can be ones that you selected in Step 2 or they can be different articles.  Both should have something to do with the brain.  Article Summary Table for the Research Projects.docx Download Article Summary Table for the Research Projects.docx

Delete all of the instructions in the table prior to submitting the two summaries.

Please note that table is designed for summarizing empirical research studies, and it is really important to use this table as it is formatted to standardize everything.  If needed, you can expand the table as you type.  Do not forget to place the APA formatted reference at the top of the page.

When typing the information into the sections, the language (phraseology) used should be expressed in your own words and written at the level of your peers in brain and behavior. Thus, do not define action potentials or MRI, but if you are talking about research studies that use diffusion tensor imaging, you might need to say that the technology measures the number of axonal tracts by tracking axonal transport. Everyone should know what axonal tracks and axonal transport is at this point. The beauty of this project is that if requires you to feed on much of the information that you have learned in this course. Remember that you are being asked to source good research studies, extract meaningful information, and express what you learned. You do not have to understand every detail in the studies to complete the table summaries, but you will have to look up information to increase your knowledge in some cases. Do not be intimidated by the language; it is a superficial barrier that you can break through. Keep in mind that the investigators break the information down in the conclusion/discussion section.  At times, it might be useful to read the abstract and do directly to the conclusion/discussion before getting into all of the methodological details.  YOU CAN DO THIS.  I suggest that you print a hard-copy and use it to underline and write notes. Feel free to upload the first page of your notated article (see the requirement in the section below).  I love to see your notes!

II. FIRST PAGES (2pts)- Upload the corresponding first pages of the research articles for the two studies that you summarized in Step 3. Each first page must clearly show the article title, authors, abstract, and anything else that is shown in the pdf (e.g., some of the introduction). I must be able to see the information on the image, and it needs to correspond to the table summary.