Dr. Costa takes cognitive research to new levels by applying eye tracking to studies of MS and SCI - Ep19 Recorded January 28, 2021. Listen to it here. [music] S1: 00:09 Welcome to Fast Takes a Women in Science podcast honoring the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. This is your host, Joan Banks-Smith. In this episode, I interviewed Dr. Silvana Costa, a research scientist in our Center for Neuropsychology and Neuroscience Research, about her scientific background, how she chose her career path, the laboratory she directs, what she hopes to accomplish in the next 10 years. Dr. Costa, can you tell us about your scientific background? S2: 00:39 I am a clinical psychologist and I did all my studies back in Portugal. I did my bachelor in clinical psychology and my Ph.D., also in clinical psychology with the main focus on neuropsychology. After my Ph.D., I came to Kessler Foundation to do a post-doctoral fellowship in neuropsychology and neuroscience. And right now that's the area that I'm working. S1: 01:10 And what made you decide to become a scientist? S2: 01:12 When I entered at the university, I knew that I want to be a clinical psychologist. That was my main focus. And during the entire course, as years were going by, the more I knew that I really wanted to be a clinical psychologist. By my fifth year, I did my internship at the neurosurgery unit in a major hospital, and that's when everything kind of turned around. So I knew I really liked clinical psychology. I was absolutely in love with everything that was neuro-related. So neurology, neurosurgery, and also the impact of neurological disorders on cognitive functions. So I decided that I needed more training, but I didn't know if I want to be a clinician or if I'm going to be a researcher. So for one year, I was a clinical psychologist. I had a private practice and at the same time was a research assistant in neuropsychology lab. So after one month, I decided that clinical psychology was not for me. And I really wanted to do research, and I wanted to do research in the impact of neurological pathologies in cognition. So at the lab that I was at, at that point, we were starting working with individuals with multiple sclerosis. And so the director of the lab suggested, "Why don't you start researching this and see what you think?" And that's when I got in love with the cognitive functions in multiple sclerosis and I decided to pursue a Ph.D. in clinical psychology with a major focus in neuroscience and neuropsychology to study cognition in MS. S1: 03:06 What does a typical day look like for you? S2: 03:09 Research is a team work. It's not a one-person job. So part of my day is meeting with my research assistants to discuss day-to-day research activities like recording participants, data collection, solving problems with data collection. And although we do a lot of testing of all our paradigms before we start data collection, there's always small little details that we have to fine-tune. There's always a computer that is not working that we have to do updates. There's always updates that we need to do on the eye trackers, so there's just always research activities that they do take time that KesslerFoundation.org |1 of 4 Dr. Costa takes cognitive research to new levels by applying eye tracking to studies of MS and SCI - Ep19 we have to do in a day-to-day basis. Another point is I meet a lot, and very often with all my collaborators to talk about how the data collection is going, how the data nodes are going, and also to discuss new ideas and new research projects. So that's one big part of my day is to meet with my collaborators, with my research assistants, to make the research happen. Another big part of my day, a lot of times is writing grants. So in order to do research, we do need money. So a lot of times we are just writing grants, writing new research ideas to get funding to do those research, and then implement those ideas. So that's a big part of my work. And one of the things that I like to do the most. I love to write grants. It's really exciting because you have a new idea and you have to put in paper and kind of convince whoever's going to read it, that your idea is important and they should spend money on you. So it's this excitement of trying to put in paper a new idea that we think is going to have a significant impact on the lives of those who live with disabilities, and that's a pretty exciting part of my job. Another part is doing data analysis, so after we collect all the data with our participants, we have to analyze that data and then writing grants to disseminate that information. So part of the job of a research scientist is give back to the public what we learn in our research. So we spend a lot of hours writing papers to show the community how we spend the money and what we learn for the money that it was invested on our work. So that's the main three activities that we have as a research scientist, writing grants, writing papers, and also managing the day-to-day research activities. S1: 06:23 You've been discussing how teamwork and collaboration is important to research. How does this happen in your research on the eye tracker? S2: 06:32 So an eye tracker is basically an advanced, very powerful video camera that records the eye movements while participants do activities. In our lab, we use the eye tracker in two different ways. And one way is using the eye tracker to research high- level cognitive operations. So for example, how long does a person need to read a text and how do they read that text? So with this technology, we are able to quantify in a better way and a more detailed cognitive process. On a second point, we use eye tracker as a human-computer interface. Which means so, for example, in populations like traumatic spinal cord injury, individuals have difficulties using their upper limbs. So, for example, writing or using a keyboard, it's really difficult. So we use the eye tracker to suppress those limitations. So, for example, if you have two images and you want the participant to tell us if it is same or different, we have the two images on the top of the screen and on the bottom, we have two boxes, one saying "Same" and the other one saying "Different". And the participant will give us the response by looking at what the response they want. So if they think it's the same, they just look with their eyes to the same box and we will be able to register that as their answer. So we're using the eye tracker in kind of two different ways. One way is to better understand cognitive functions in individuals with neurological [populations?]. And the other way is to use the eye tracker as a human-computer interface. So having the participants giving their responses to exercises, using their eyes. KesslerFoundation.org |2 of 4 Dr. Costa takes cognitive research to new levels by applying eye tracking to studies of MS and SCI - Ep19 S1: 08:41 I was wondering, are you able to use the eye tracker in an MRI scanner to view the brain in real-time? S2: 08:47 Yes. So we have really powerful eye tracker that we can use outside the scanner just behaviorally with the use of one computer. So you basically have a computer and the eye tracker and that's it. But you can also use the eye tracker inside the MRI, which is really, really fun. So we have an eye tracker very close to the MRI scan and we can see where the participants are looking at while they're doing a task inside of the scan. S1: 09:17 How does this research translate into a clinical and research setting? S2: 09:22 So one of the biggest challenges we have in understanding cognitive functions in spinal cord injury is that a lot of the tests that we use to examine cognitive functions, it requires a [brillings?] function. So, for example, we need people to use a keyboard or writing something. And in this population, those tests are not valid because a lot of times even high-functioning individuals with traumatic ACI are not able to do those tasks. It is understudied area, but worse than that, even when we want to study, we have several limitations that it's really hard to overcome. We are developing studies to use the eye tracker as a human0computer interface so we can assess efficiently cognitive functions. So I hope that one day we will be able to translate our knowledge to the clinic so we would have eye trackers on clinics and hospitals, which will allow clinicians to assess in an easy and efficient way cognitive functions in traumatic ACI. So basically developing tools that will make cognitive function assessment available, independent of motor function.