When recording neuroimaging data, it is important to put your participant at ease. For the participants to feel at ease during their imaging experience it is essential that they enter the scan suite feeling comfortable and informed. You have an inherent responsibility when running a neuroimaging study to ensure that your participants are suitably briefed and prepared; particularly if it is the participant's first scan. Some participants find the imaging suites an intimidating environment. However, as the Investigator, it is also very much in your interest to ensure that the participant is at ease.
When recording neuroimaging data, you are recording all the activity in your participants' brain i.e. not just the selective responses to your stimuli. If the participant enters the scan suite feeling apprehensive and nervous, and spends the whole of their scan worrying, it is likely that your results will contain a good representation of the response to apprehension, which may swamp the responses to your paradigm. Also, if your experiment has a behavioral or attentional component, then apprehension may impair the participant's performance, resulting in a weaker response. The combined effect of a poorly prepared participant may be that they have both more noise in their neural responses and also less signal. So, it goes without saying that this will do the signal-to-noise ratio of your results no favours at all!
Lastly, investigators should be reminded that the YNiC Consent forms inform participants that they may leave the scan suite at any point, without having to give the investigator or operator a reason. Therefore, once again, it is also in your interests to ensure the participant is fully prepared for their scan.
Re-familiarise yourself with the data confidentiality issues related to acquiring MRI / MEG data. There are important confidentiality issues when acquiring MRI / MEG data. These are especially pertinent when you know your participant. In the RGC approval for your study, you will have been given information regarding the confidentiality issues of scaning. If you have done little scanning, or it is a while since you scanned, it is advisable to re-acquaint yourselves with this advice.
Data Protection.
It is required that you
familiarise yourself with the YNiC Data Protection policy and the rules
contained within for handling data and especially for taking it offsite.
The Data Protection Policy is referenced within the YNiC Rules of
Computer Use and you will be required to sign up to these when you are
given your IT account. The Data Protection Policy is available at https://www.ynic.york.ac.uk/guides. Should you have any
questions, please contact the YNiC Data Controller at
<data@ynic.york.ac.uk>
Participants should be introduced to the MEG/MRI operator, rather than just directed towards the scan suites. Once your participant is prepared for the scan, it is best practice to accompany them to the scan suite. As you will be present for the scan anyway, this should not present any difficulties. If the scan is a structural scan, it is not necessary for you to be present at the scan, however, it is advised that you should still accompany the participant to the scan suite.
At the end of scan, investigators should accompany participants back to changing rooms. Once they are changed, make sure that the participant has no further questions.
Finally, please place the completed YNiC Consent Forms in the Return Post-Box in the YNiC Reception area. The forms will then be filed away for future use.
The following is a point of practice in the scan suite that is a recommendation to help the scan process go smoothly for your participants, for you and for the operator. The best data is generally recorded when everything runs smoothly, and as the investigator, you are typically the person who dictates how smoothly the scan proceeds.
You are advised to discuss your experimental setup with the operator before you start to scan. In doing this, you will be able to establish your respective roles during the scan. As the investigator, you are responsible for the running of your stimuli in the scan suite. During your pilot scan, you will have agreed a modus operandi for your study. This will have been recorded on the respective Experimental Set Up form for your study (https://www.ynic.york.ac.uk/forms/MRIsetup.doc or https://www.ynic.york.ac.uk/forms/MEGsetup.doc). As a result of this, when you enter the scan suite, the operator will have set up the stimulus presentation hardware settings that you require for your study. As the Investigator, you should be familiar with these, and check with the operator that the set up is correct. During the recording phase, the operator will also start and stop the MEG or MRI data acquisition. However, the running of stimuli is up to you. Therefore, for a smooth acquisition, there needs to be good communication between the investigator and the operator to dove-tail stimulus presentation and data acquisition. A little coordination between the investigator and the operator before acquisition can make a big difference to the recording process! So, be pro-active, familiar with your experimental set up, and work out the best way to work together with your operator.
If your scan protocol involves a behavioral component, and these responses are recorded on the stimulus computer (i.e. there are button presses etc. which are saved into a logfile), ensure that you remove them from the stimulus PC at the end of the acquisition. We suggest you put them onto a USB device and transfer them to your Project Group directory. If you do not take this behavioral data with you after the scan, then it may not be on the stimulus PC when you return for your next scan. This is particularly important for fMRI studies when button presses and reaction times are nearly always recorded on to the stimulus PC. In MEG, it is more common to save response in the data than on the stim PC, so in MEG this is less of an issue.
In MEG, you also need to record in your logbook the distances moved by each participant in each run. This is important information, because if a participant makes any big movements during acquisition, you may have to reject that dataset.