As part of his PhD in Health Sciences, Brookes Folmli is carrying out a study to establish whether repeated sessions of non-invasive nervous system stimulation can modify sensory perception in a healthy population.
He is looking for 30 volunteers for the study and they can be either male or female, aged between 18 and 65, and in good health.
The testing involves a total time commitment of no more than six hours spread over five consecutive days and each participant will be compensated for their time in the form of $50.
Brookes Folmli said volunteers would also have the satisfaction of knowing that they have contributed to a better understanding of the human nervous system, which could help develop better treatments for nervous system disorders such as chronic pain and stroke.
"This experiment is significant because the human nervous system plays an important part in every day living," he said.
"It enables us to engage with and respond to our environment in an appropriate manner, and it can adapt very quickly to circumstances.
"My research is looking at techniques that aim to provide further insight into this adaptive capability of the nervous system.
The research aims to alter sensory sensation by applying mild electrical stimulation to the participant’s scalp (thus indirectly stimulating the brain) and measuring sensation to tolerable pain and temperature stimuli delivered to the skin surface of the participant’s hand.
"The sensory perception testing is done before and after the mild electrical stimulation on the scalp on day one and again after stimulation on day five," said Brookes.
"In this way we can test to see if there is any measurable improvement in a person's ability to perceive different types of stimuli.”
"Potentially the next stage would be doing this in a population suffering from chronic pain.”
To learn more about the study or participate, contact Brookes Folmli on [email protected]