Research Seminar Paper

Professor: Dr. David Nichols

Semester: Spring 2016

Assignment Description: For our final Research Seminar paper, we were asked to write up the results of the study that we carried out over the course of the semester and to do so in the submission format for a journal we would consider submitting our manuscript to. Though the project was executed as a group, papers were written individually.

Excerpt: (Taken from "Discussion" section.) Student responses indicated a significant preference for individual electrodes, suggesting that this equipment is perhaps not only sufficient for an introductory neuroscience lab course setting but also preferable. Responses of researchers – and participants to an extent – suggest an overall preference for caps, but the difference was not strong enough for a definite recommendation to be made about which setup is more preferential to use in undergraduate research settings. Therefore, the logical conclusion seems to be that although the use of caps has certain benefits over the use of individual electrodes, it is not necessary for undergraduate programs to invest their resources in the cap setup, especially if their financial resources are highly limited. As one PSYC/NEUR 330 student pointed out, caps would be particularly beneficial if the input of many electrodes was needed. All in all, the decision to invest in electrode cap equipment must take into account the relative advantages and disadvantages of each setup as well as a particular program’s resources and needs.

Reflection: Throughout the semester, the intention was to submit my final paper to the Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education, so this paper constituted my first experience with writing a manuscript from scratch and then submitting it to a journal for publication. As that goal was more explicit than with my previous research experiences, it affected how I approached the process of designing and conducting the study. I factored in relevance to potential readers in addition to personal interest when considering what questions to ask participants and how to set up the study's procedures. This was an important addition to how I thought about the project as it caused me to think more critically about what we were doing and why. I also had to think creatively about what it would be important to address, how to address those things, and then how to present our results. That was especially relevant in the creation of the poster, wherein we had to agree as a group on how to condense our project and all we wanted to convey about it into a limited amount of space. It was also relevant when I created the figures used in the poster and in my paper. The most impactful part of the process for me, however, was the submission, revision, and publication of the manuscript based on my group's work and my final paper. That process made me think even more about how to articulate my ideas and present results to others. It further enforced what I learned in Research Seminar and what I had learned in my other experiences with research in addition to teaching me about the publication process.