Hello Everyone!! My name is Stephanie Hornyak, and I am a PhD candidate in Clinical Psychology working with Dr. Shayna Rosenbaum at York University, who is also an Associate Scientist at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest.
As I have mentioned in previous postings, research that is conducted in our lab involves investigating the areas of the brain involved in memory for personal events and facts acquired a long time ago. We are especially interested in testing birders' memory, particularly those who keep detailed journals/databases/lists relating to bird sightings (including web postings). Birders represent a unique group, as they are experts in visually discriminating bird species, and this appears to involve the same parts of the brain that are involved in humans' ability (birders and non-birders) to perceive other people's faces!! I have posted on this listserv before in regards to recruitment for current research that is being conducted in our lab, and I am pleased to announce that we have more openings for further participation as of today. The study I have been running for the past year is near completion with more than 3/4 of recruitment met. We are underway with our preliminary analysis and hopefully I will have something to report by the end of the summer. To give our study a bit more power, we are currently looking for a few more individuals who meet the following criteria: - who have extensive experience as bird watchers (10 years or more) - are between the ages of approximately 30-65 - are ok with being in an MRI for approximately 1.5 hours, and completing the entire study which is about 5.5 hours in total (this includes 3 hours of further non-MRI computer tasks and breaks) - are right-handed - keep some sort of birding records of outings/trips including species, date seen and location. This imaging study involves scanning birders with MRI as they recollect past experiences relating to bird sightings in comparison to recalling facts about various types of birds. Scanning would take place at Baycrest in Toronto. Volunteers would receive monetary compensation for their participation, in addition to extra travel compensation if travelling outside of the Greater Toronto Area. If you think you would be interested in participating in this current research study, and/or would like some more information pertaining to this study, please feel free to email me privately at [email protected]. Your expert knowledge and memory of birds is exactly what we are looking for to help us answer our research questions. I have already received tonnes of excellent advice with respect to our protocol and I would love to hear more! I hope everyone has a wonderful day and I look forward to speaking with you in the near future, Sincerely, Stephanie Stephanie Hornyak, M.Sc. PhD. Candidate, Clinical Psychology Department of Psychology Neuroscience Graduate Diploma Program Cognitive Neuroscience Lab York University 4700 Keele Street Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Email: [email protected] _______________________________________________ ONTBIRDS is presented by the Ontario Field Ornithologists - the provincial birding organization. Send bird reports to ONTBIRDS mailing list [email protected] For information about ONTBIRDS visit http://www.ofo.ca/
