Birkbeck Migraine Study
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Welcome to Birkbeck Migraine Study

Aims:

This experiment aims to track changes in visual perception over several months. We are looking for people who are prepared to participate regularly, ideally daily or every other day, over several months. We aim to track changes over time in performance on objective measures of visual perception, and associate any changes with occurrences of your migraines or headaches. If you wish, we will enter you into a raffle at the end of the experiment: you will be entered into a draw where five £50 gifts will be prizes in a raffle. You will be eligible to enter the raffle if you complete the study.

Name of researcher: Dr Alex Shepherd

This experiment is being conducted by the Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London. The study has received ethical approval from the Department’s ethical committee.

The experiment has two sections. During the first session, you will be asked to complete a questionnaire that asks about your headaches, your reading experiences, and other sensory symptoms that people can experience. Then you will be asked to complete four visual tasks. Two tasks asks you to judge the direction of motion of a cloud of moving dots. The other two tasks ask you to judge the orientation of short line fragments (vertical or horizontal, or oriented left of vertical or right of vertical).

On subsequent sessions, you will be asked a few simple questions about your migraine/headache history since you last participated, and then you will be asked to complete the four visual tasks again. Ideally, we would like you to complete the visual tasks at about the same time of day on consecutive occasions, although this is not essential.

The first session should take you approximately 20 minutes to complete. The subsequent sessions should take approximately 10 minutes to complete.

If you wish, we will send you a summary of the results upon completion. If we can identify changes in your performance associated with migraine or headache proximity to the test session, you may find this useful if you wish to learn to manage when your migraines or headaches occur. Please tick the box below if you would like to be informed of the outcome of the research.

All data are confidential and will be anonymised. You will not be able to be identified from the data collected, nor from any publications that may result from this research.

With any visual display, there is a very slight chance that you may find them unpleasant and they may induce headache if you continue to look at them. This is very unlikely and, if you do find any of the displays unpleasant, please leave the experiment immediately.

If you would like any further information, please contact Dr Alex Shepherd (perception-study@bbk.ac.uk) who will answer any questions.

Departmental address:

Department of Psychological Sciences,
Birkbeck, University of London,
Malet St,
London
WC1E 7HX

TEL: 020 7631 6212

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