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Newsletter September 2014

iLab research meeting

The iLab research meeting about the use of diaries in clinical practice will take place the 29th of September (15.00-17.00, UCP room 3.18). A UCP pilot study, personalizing a diary, and providing feedback to patients will be discussed by seven speakers (Michelle Servaas, Renske Kroeze, Date van der Veen, Anne van Gils, Tineke Oldehinkel, ElskeBos and Rob Wanders). The first iLab meeting in 2015 will be on the 30th of March. Ideas for topics to discuss during this meeting are welcome.

iLab introduction meeting
Every first Tuesday of the month Karin Janssens will introduce the iLab and the iLab Google Drive environment to new employees and students. The first meeting was attended by 6 persons, who found the introduction helpful. The meeting is also open for current employees or students who want to know more about the iLab or encounter problems while using Google Docs. The upcoming introduction meetings are (1 p.m to 1.30 p.m.):
7 October 2014 Room K1.25
2 December 2014 Room K1.25
6 January 2015 Room K1.25
3 February 2015 Room K1.25
3 March 2015 Room K1.25

Equipment
There is still iLab equipment available for clinical research, such as iPhones, iPads and actometers. Please remember that you have to reserve this equipment in advance by filling out the reservation sheet on the Google Drive platform and contacting Jantina Douglas.

Freezer control
HannekeGeugies and Maria Schenk are now, together with Tom Bak, responsible for the -80◦C freezers in the basement of the UCP. That means that they will take action when the alarm of the freezer goes off in order to save frozen material if needed. We are very happy that they are willing to do so and would like to thank them for their efforts!

Work group automatic feedback
A new iLab workgroup will start in October 2014 to bring together all researchers who want to provide study participants automatic feedback based on the electronic diaries these participants filled out. During the work group we will discuss problems and search for solutions regarding the provision of automatic feedback. If you want to participate, and did not do so already, you can sign in for the group by sending an e-mail to Karin Janssens.

Smartphone credits – short update (Maria Schenk)
As mentioned in the previous iLab newsletter (May2014), there are smartphones available for use in iLab studies. For the study “HowNutsAreTheDutch” (HoeGekIsNL), we make use of this opportunity. Several participants completed the study with the smartphones provided by iLab. We chose Vodafone prepaid cards for providing the connectivity. As for any telecom provider, using Vodafone cards has pros and cons. The Vodafone service and coverage are good. Also, the SIM cards can be registered online and in case of loss or theft Vodafone will replace the SIM card for free. The SIM cards cost €5,-, with €5,- of data for free after registration. The calling credit can be upgraded using cards of €10,- or a multiple of €10,-. Data can be purchased in amounts of 200 MB (€9,50) or 1 GB (€14,95), nothing in between. For HowNutsAreTheDutch we purchased 1 GB, which would definitely be enough for the participants to finish the study. The data balance is valid for 30 days after purchase. The SIM card is valid for 1 year after the last time use. All in all we are content with Vodafone prepaid.

New employee (Michelle Servaas)
My name is Michelle Servaas and I have a research position at the iLab, UCP (UMCG). In my PhD thesis, I investigated the underlying neural mechanisms of the personality trait neuroticism to gain insight into why individuals scoring high on this trait are more vulnerable to develop psychopathology. Furthermore, I am an intern at the UCP learning about diagnostics and treatment of chronic depressive patients. Part of this internship was performing an EMA pilot study (EMA pilot UCP) to investigate whether individual patient feedback could be generated using an idiographic approach, namely ecological momentary assessment (EMA). The goal of this approach is to monitor fluctuations in, among others, mood, physical activity, social context and daily hassles via a short questionnaire that has to be filled out multiple times a day for a longer period of time by the patient. Subsequently, network analyses were performed on these EMA data to gain insight into the relationships between the various variables and their causal effect on each other (lag-based analysis). Feedback of the analyses were given to the patients and evaluated by both the patients and their therapist. In the current research position, I will develop research methods to investigate the connection between EMA data and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data in healthy controls and remitted depressive patients, using network analyses.

Google Drive update
New information on Google Drive mainly concerns information about physical activity and sleep and how to measure this subjectively and objectively in diary studies. Moreover, information about questionnaires used in the Alzheimer study, hoeGekisNL and the Ema pilot UCP has become available.