Two faculty members in Merrimack College’s School of Arts and Sciences have received a $403,937 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to research napping as a therapy for concussion symptoms.
Associate Professors Laura Kurdziel and Allison Seitchik officially received the R15 grant in January and will now expand their study on whether napping can help alleviate two of the most common concussion symptoms: sleep disruption and emotional changes.
“We want to examine if altering sleep in some way, and in this case extending sleep with a nap, would help to improve emotion regulation,” said Kurdziel. “It is a fairly easy therapy that people can do and we are confident this study will make a meaningful impact.”
The study, conducted in Merrimack College’s Social Cognition and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN) Lab located in O’Reilly Hall, asks subjects to participate in two sessions within three weeks of their concussion. In one session, the subject naps and their brain activity is recorded using an electroencephalogram (EEG) cap.
In the other session, the subject stays awake for a similar amount of time. In both sessions, participants are then shown both neutral and negative images. When the subject sees a negative image, they are asked to regulate their emotions. In addition to recording brain activity throughout this task, the researchers also track the subject’s eye movements.
“Monitoring their eyes can help us better understand behavior as they work to regulate their emotions,” said Seitchik. “Are they looking at the image? Are they looking away? Their pupil dilation can also tell us if they are actively trying to regulate their emotion.”
This grant award is critical to Merrimack College’s continued commitment to enhancing and supporting innovative faculty research and growing the research culture on campus. Achieving R2 classification by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education not only requires at least 20 research doctoral degrees awarded annually, but also at least $5 million in total research expenditures annually.
To date, Kurdziel and Seitchik have collected data from 10 subjects. With the NIH grant, they hope to have about 60 participants over the next three years. Part of the funding will go toward paying students who play an integral role in conducting the study and collecting the data.
“We cannot collect the data without our students’ help,” Seitchik said, adding they currently have 13 students working on the study. “This is a great opportunity for them and puts into perspective why we are doing this work.”
Kurdziel and Seitchik have worked together for several years to secure grant funding. They were part of the first cohort of Merrimack College’s Strategic Academic Research Trajectory Package (START) program, which supports faculty in their efforts to secure external funding for new or existing research. The pair credits that opportunity, as well as the support of the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP), with helping them ultimately receive the NIH award.
“We have been attempting to write grants for a while now and with the extra guidance from START and ORSP, we are much more confident in our abilities,” said Kurdziel. “It’s all really exciting.”
The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
