jannekedammers

About two and a half years ago, Dr. Emma Sprooten started the DELTA project. In DELTA, acronym for Determinants of Long-term Trajectories in ADHD, she investigates factors that contribute to the difference in (severity of) symptoms and impairment in people who were diagnosed with ADHD as a child. Previously, these adults participated in a study called NeuroImage when they were a child. We asked them if they were willing to participate one more time in this study. We will post three blogs about the project. This is blog 2.

What happens on a test day?

Back to Essen, autumn 2019. Our participants receive a letter with an indication of the address and a photo of the exact building. Even then, a lot of them seem to be somewhat confused. Is the appointment really here, in this place? Yes, the 7 Tesla MRI scanner that can produce super detailed images happens to be here. On the premises of an old coalmine, that is now a UNESCO world heritage site, as we’ve seen last week.

When everyone has arrived, we start with coffee. Long travels make thirsty, right? While we serve coffee, participants fill in a form with questions about their health. This is to make sure that their health is compliant with the German safety rules to undergo a 7 Tesla MRI scan.

When we enter the scanner room wearing shoes that contain metal parts, we can actually feel that this scanner has a very strong field strength: some shoes make you feel like wading through water! This strong field strength is why participants wear the green or blue clothes that surgeons wear in the operation theatre. A lot of ‘normal’ clothing has metal parts (such as zippers) or invisible metallic microfibers. This would give distortions on the data we gather or, even worse, can cause burns on their skin.

Going into the scanner is a special experience too. Because of the strong magnetic field, you may feel dizzy when moving into the scanner. One of our participants told afterwards: ‘I was really a bit confused: huh, I didn’t use drugs, what’s happening!?’ Compared to the 3 Tesla scanner in Nijmegen, where we also make an MRI scan, participants are placed quite a bit deeper into the bore of the scanner. Their whole body actually is inside the tunnel. So not having claustrophobia is also important. The participants spend the next 45 minutes in the dark, accompanied by loud rhythmic noise, until the scan is finished.

Time for lunch. During lunch, we transfer the data from the scanner to our hard drive, so that we can take it back to Nijmegen. Because the scanner registers the brain in such a detailed and precise manner, it generates a lot of data. The files that the scanner generates are so big that it lasts about half an hour to transfer the files!

Lunch is also a good time to have an informal chat about how the first day of testing – in Nijmegen – had been. During the first test day in Nijmegen, we also make an MRI. This MRI is made on a 3 Tesla scanner. In Nijmegen the scan consists of a part where you can just lie down and a part where you, still lying down, do some mental exercises. In that first part we measure brain anatomy and the activity of the brain at rest. During the mental exercises, we measure what happens in the brain while performing the exercise. Next to scanning we ask participants to fill in questionnaires, and do some tests to measure their IQ. We also do clinical interviews to assess the presence of ADHD symptoms and possible comorbid disorders.

After lunch we usually schedule one of the clinical interviews that are part of the project. When this is finished, it is time to head back to Nijmegen!

While collecting the data, we learn a lot about how people integrate ADHD in their lives. We feel honored by all these people telling us their life stories and helping us by participating in our project. Some participants tell us that they learned more about themselves or gained new insights. A compliment that makes us grateful.

Next week, we will explain why we drive all the way to Essen with our participants, and provide you with some information on the content of the project.

About two and a half years ago, Dr. Emma Sprooten started the DELTA project. In DELTA, acronym for Determinants of Long-term Trajectories in ADHD, she investigates factors that contribute to the difference in (severity of) symptoms and impairment in people who were diagnosed with ADHD as a child. Previously, these adults participated in a study called NeuroImage when they were a child. We asked them if they were willing to participate one more time in this study. In the coming three weeks, we will post three blogs about the project. This is blog 1.

2019. Somewhere in autumn. Trees have become all shades of brown, yellow and red. We pass forests while driving on a German highway, all the way from Holland. After a while, the landscape changes from the colored forest to an industrial town. It is grey and gloomy, packed with old-fashioned industry buildings. Soon, the navigation sends us into an even more surreal place. We find ourselves surrounded by rusty brown pipes in a place that feels like an abandoned factory. If we would not know better, we would begin to feel a bit worried about what could happen here…

What brings us here in this desolate area? To put it short, a bunch of people who were diagnosed with ADHD during their childhood, and a hypermodern 7 Tesla MRI scanner. Over ten years ago, as children, our participants first came in together with their parents and siblings. They played games, were interviewed and got an MRI scan, that was presented to them as ‘ a picture of the inside of your brain’. Now, we are repeating these measurements for a third time, with an upgrade from 3 Tesla to 7 Tesla MRI, allowing even more detailed pictures of their brains.

For scientists it is extremely valuable that people are willing to take part in this research. This is one of the few cohorts in the world in which people with ADHD are followed up for such a long time. It makes it possible to investigate which factors influence the different clinical trajectories that ADHD can take:. We are now testing people for already a third time in the NeuroImage project, that started in 2009. The current follow-up is called the DELTA project. More on the content of the project in our third blog.

Next week, we’ll give you a peek into what a participant experiences during a test day in Essen.

If you cannot wait to get some information on NeuroImage, see: https://www.ru.nl/donders/vm-site/collaborations/projects/neuroimage/

For a peak into Zollverein, the world heritage site where the 7 Tesla scanner is located, see: https://www.zollverein.de/zollverein-unesco-world-heritage-site/ The photo at the top of this post shows a detail of the coal mine at Zollverein.