Saturday, February 4, 2012

Post Doctoral Fellow Interview! Last interview for the Tourette's Documentary!

Last night I filmed my last interview for the documentary! I was very excited for this interview because I was interviewing a post doctoral fellow who both has Tourette's and researches/studies it. She was very young but none the less her work was very fascinating!

She didn't want to be filmed all that much and was camera shy which she blames on her TS, but I still got so much out of the interview. We first just chatted about the research that she is doing at the moment. What she's doing right now is a study on children when they first start ticcing. Basically they are doing MRI scans of the brains of children who just started ticcing and follow the children for a year to see which kids develop Tourette's and which kids just had transient tics. Their goal is to find a way to differentiate between the two groups and see what makes tics "stick" in a since for certain people and not for others. She said its hard to get a lot of people to study though because its hard to find kids who just started ticcing and get them into the lab. 


Then I asked her about what research needed to be done in the future. She started talking about biofeedback and the idea that maybe one day biofeedback could help people with tics to a greater extent.  It was a very fascinating conversation and I greatly enjoyed meeting her! 


The funniest part was when the other young members of the lab came up to the window and started laughing and taking pictures of her! They thought it was really funny apparently that she was sitting in the main doctor's chair and in the main doctors office being interviewed like a professional. She was trying to close to blinds and was laughing along with them. 


At the end she agreed to do a short video clip for the documentary! She introduced herself, said she got interested in this kind of research because of her own Tourette's, and that she was excited to research it going forward and find possible new treatments and discoveries. I already put her clip in the documentary and it looks really good. 


Her next project is to scan the brains of people 18 and older who have Tourette's and wanted to know if I would be interested in being part of the study. I told her yes and to e-mail me when she was looking for participants! I think it would be rather awesome to have a picture of my brain and to help out the TS cause even more! 


All in all a very good interview! She was a really awesome person in general and she's the kind of person that you just want to know better and spend time with. Oh and she also was excited for me to send her the trailer and told me that she would give the full version to parents of kids with TS that she sees! Exciting! 


Anyway hoping to finish up the documentary this weekend. Tomorrow I have a super bowl party with my cousins and today I am finishing up a lot of homework. SO much homework! But hopefully I will have time to finish up the documentary.


Also last night I finished A Smile as Big as the Moon! It was very good! A bit "Hallmarky" but what do you expect, its a Hallmark movie!

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