Well here I am in Hammersmith Hospital having my brain stimulated, or perhaps not, as it’s a double-blind study.
“A double-blind study is one in which neither the participants nor the experimenters know who is receiving a particular treatment. This procedure is utilized to prevent bias in research results. Double-blind studies are particularly useful for preventing bias due to demand characteristics or the placebo effect.”
So nobody knows, tiddely pom, if I am receiving mild electric shocks or just getting a lot of gel in my hair. I spent two hours doing cognitive tests and making lots of mistakes. Why?
The researchers want to compare healthy brains with the brains of stroke patients who have problems concentrating. They want to better understand whether a session of non-invasive, safe, and painless brain stimulation can improve attention. They will see if they can use this to alleviate symptoms in people who have had a stroke.
They are doing another study which interests me too. It’s a bit off the wall; they want to compare performance in gambling tasks of healthy participants with those with Alzheimer’s Disease. Participants are given £10 (provided) and have thirty minutes to gamble; game not specified. At the end participants keep their winnings, if there are any. What mystifies me is why an Alzheimer’s sufferer would want to gamble? Too easy to forget the wager even in the time it takes the ball to rattle round a roulette wheel.
The more it goes (Tiddely pom),
The more it goes (Tiddely pom)
On snowing.And nobody knows (Tiddely pom),
How cold my toes (Tiddely pom),
How cold my toes (Tiddely pom),
Are growing.
Many of the authors ideas could be described as hairbrained, yet even I, in my most vivid imagination, could not have forseen such a description manifesting itself so literally.
‘Safe’ he tells us; experimental treatments can never be guaranteed to be 100% safe, that is why he is the guinea pig.
The onset of old age is often accompained by a noticable lack of good judgment, and as our esteemed friend is now officially an OAP, perhaps this accounts for him abandoning his senses.
I have had many years experience working with modern medics and their abstract treatment ideas, alas, most of them couldn’t cure bacon.
I will be an OAP next year when I will receive the State pension. HH’s comments are sometimes wide of the mark.