-
Asked by anon-179729 to Maria, John, Daniel, Claire, Amy, Stephen on 15 Jun 2018.
-
Amy Pearson answered on 15 Jun 2018:
Oh this is a really good question! My absolute dream test would be one that allows us to examine what really connects peoples minds (their thoughts and experiences) to their brain, and how this happens. fMRI and brain scanning allows us to do this to a degree, but there is a still a level of uncertainty about the exact nature of the relationship between mind and brain. I’m sure something like this will exist one day, and no doubt advances in machine learning and neural networks will help us to get there.
If it was possible now, I would invest, but If I won, I would use to money to help develop training materials to teach young people and adults more about autism, and how to interact in helpful ways with autistic people.
-
-
Stephen Baillargeon answered on 15 Jun 2018:
I would love to help design a test that people suffering from any kind of mental illness or psychological trouble can fill out that will match them with the perfect therapist. There are a lot of different therapies and they all work differently for different people, but we don’t yet know exactly what will work for who, and a lot of times, it’s up to someone with mental illness to figure out for themselves what kind of treatment they’d benefit most from, which requires them to read a ton about a bunch of different therapies. Not everybody has time for that, and it makes everything very intimidating. But some research is done that says that people with Borderline Personality Disorder benefit from Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy works really well for people who have great critical thinking skills, but not as good for people who function more on intuition, Applied Behavior Analysis works best for Autistic children under the age of six, and AA mostly works for people who practice Christianity. It would be lovely if you could just take one quick test and it would show you exactly what kind of therapist would be the most helpful for your unique problems.
-
Claire Melia answered on 16 Jun 2018:
Oh wow that is tough. I think I would most like to test the underlying causes of addiction. If we knew definitively what the root causes of addiction are, then we would be able to tackle it much better. However, I do personally believe that it’s much more complicated than any one or two factors so even then i’m not sure how much a test would help!
In my research I don’t test things so much, rather I explore them. So I explore how we talk about alcohol use, how we think, what our experiences are, so testing isn’t really my area! There are many many people who do this type of research and it absolutely has its place, but I prefer to understand the experiences and stories of individuals. I think you can get a lot more from that and sometimes it can be even more useful 🙂
-
Maria Montefinese answered on 18 Jun 2018:
Hi Wingy! 🙂 This is a really hard question! My dream test should be a test able to detect lies and false memories, but I’m not sure this is a easy thing to do because it would requires the recording of physiological signals (like heart beat and pupillometry), but also include other kind of tests based on what the person says, his/her gesture, body posture, and so forth.
For the prize money I couldn’t do this, and I think that this test would still require a lot of study before a similar test could be possible to build. However, a first step would be that to spread my research with a brochure about the use of pupil size in response to the false memory and online games for children and teenagers to teach them some rules about the organization of the word meaning in our brain.
All the best,
Maria
Comments