{"id":7952,"date":"2011-02-01T10:40:44","date_gmt":"2011-02-01T15:40:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=7952"},"modified":"2021-04-16T08:49:25","modified_gmt":"2021-04-16T12:49:25","slug":"new-equipment-helps-grad-students-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2011\/02\/new-equipment-helps-grad-students-research\/","title":{"rendered":"New equipment helps grad student’s research"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"PhD

PhD Psychology student Lesley Capuana demonstrates how the Nexfin - continuous non-invasive blood pressure (BP) monitor - will be used in her research project. For the demonstration, the finger cuff of the monitor is fitted on the left ring finger of Angela Dzyundzyak, also a PhD Psychology student.<\/p><\/div>\n

A blood pressure monitor \u2014 considerably more sophisticated than those typically used in health-care settings \u2014 stands alongside other equipment inside a lab within Brock\u2019s Jack and Nora Walker Canadian Centre for Lifespan Development Research<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This piece of equipment is one of two major additions that are now central to PhD Psychology<\/a> student Lesley Capuana\u2019s research on aging.<\/p>\n

Capuana\u2019s research focuses on the link between heart rate variability and task performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are finding, along with others, that the greater variability in beat-to-beat intervals that an individual has will lead to better performance on a task,\u201d she said. \u201cWe know that heart rate variability is higher in younger adults and declines with age. We want to determine whether this decline is partially responsible for the cognitive declines that often accompany the aging process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Capuana will put the monitor to work in the next few months in a study with volunteers from the community, ages 65 to 80, and young adults from Brock. The goal is to understand the relationship between the brain and cardiovascular system in supporting higher-level cognitive functions (attention, memory) and how these change with age.<\/p>\n

Participants will sit at a computer and complete a series of attention-demanding tasks. They will wear the new finger cuff monitor that allows blood pressure to be measured non-intrusively throughout the test. This is not possible with standard equipment.<\/p>\n

It was also impossible to track the exclusive influence of the sympathetic nervous system on cardiac function \u2014 \u201cthe fight or flight\u201d reaction. The addition of a technology used to measure impedance cardiography fills this role. Cardiac information will be recorded through sensors attached to the back and chest, similar to a standard electrocardiograph but involving more complex computations.<\/p>\n

The acquisition of this new equipment and technology was made possible through recent funding to Prof. Sid Segalowitz and Prof. Jane Dywan, Capuana\u2019s supervisor. They were among researchers at Brock to be awarded a total of $727,012 from the Ministry of Research and Innovation last year to support projects focusing on aging, human health and materials science.<\/p>\n

\u201cEquipment like this meets the highest standards in the field and will have meaningful applications for years to come,\u201d Dywan said.<\/p>\n

The funding is an investment in Brock\u2019s team of lifespan researchers, including Capuana and several other graduate students. Their research focuses on how the ability to modulate physiological arousal affects the ability to regulate both cognitive and emotional function, including children at risk for developmental disorders through to older adults at risk for cognitive decline.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur research provides a window through which we can study the relationship between brain function and physiological arousal,\u201d she said. \u201cFrom there, people can take the information in a number of directions from promoting the importance of fitness throughout the lifespan to targeting pharmacological applications.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lesley Capuana is doing research on aging.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5],"tags":[224,223,9749,29,31],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7952"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7952"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71722,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7952\/revisions\/71722"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}