Primary and secondary data in neuroscience research

¶ … Worker responses provide data, which is known as primary data. On the other hand, some research projects entail use of data already collected by somebody else (for example, Canadian Census survey data). Researchers study this already-gathered data to find answers to their research question. Such data is known as secondary data. One advantage of primary data collection is that, in this process, information is collected specifically for a particular study. The questions asked by researchers are essentially tailored for eliciting information which will aid them in the study. Research tools like interviews, surveys and direct observation (e.g. observation of safety practices at a factory) are employed for collecting primary data. Secondary data is normally easily available and obtainable at low prices. Additionally, secondary data over a long duration can be easily obtained for analysis. For instance, one can examine a firm's lost-time rate trends over many years (IWH, 2008).

Primary Data

Lateralized areas of the human brain help to promote functions like visuo-spatial and language processing. A hypothesis has been developed that humans may be right-brain or left-brain dominant depending upon their cognitive and personality styles; however, data from neuroimaging doesn't offer clear evidence regarding whether there actually exist phenotypic variations in right-dominant or left-dominant networks' strengths. Nielson and colleagues, in 2013, looked into whether there exists a covariance in strongly lateralized brain connections in the same person. Data were examined from resting state brain scans available publicly; research sample included 1011 persons aged from 7 to 29 years. For every individual, researchers assessed functional lateralization for every pair of 7266 brain areas that cover gray matter, as a variance in correlation both prior to, and after, inversion of the 5-mm resolution images around the midsagittal (or median) plane (Nielsen, Zielinski, Ferguson, Lainhart, & Anderson, 2013).

Secondary Data

The research work taken as secondary data analyzes visual feedback's possible, particularly that of mirror visual feedback, which was introduced more than 15 years back, to treat several chronic neurological problems, like phantom pain, complex regional pain syndrome and hemiparesis resulting from stroke, which were earlier considered intractable. In addition to its clinical significance, mirror visual feedback (MVF) facilitates a fundamental change in how neurological disorders are tackled. Rather than resulting totally from a permanent injury to specialized modules of the brain, some may emerge from temporary functional, potentially reversible shifts. In such cases, one can devise fairly simple therapies such as mirror visual feedback for function restoration (Ramachandran & Altschuler, 2009).

Brief Reflection

One gets to understand the extent to which a research work's author is involved in the events described in the paper, by knowing whether the work is primary or secondary. Readers know whether the report is an account of first-hand experience (or is the first record of any given event), or conveys others' views and experiences (UCSC, n.d.). Results of a researcher and that of his/her colleagues unequivocally proves that one may dissolve obstacles between modules (such as between proprioception and vision through MVF), between one's body and mind (for instance, the demonstration of McCabe with regards to temperature variations in reflex sympathetic dystrophy (RSD)) as well as between two brains (virtually feeling another person's pain in one's phantom), very easily (Ramachandran & Altschuler, 2009). In spite of the need to further look into the relationship of lateralized connectivity with behavior, right- and left-lateralized networks are demonstrated as equally powerful amidst a collection of hubs in right and left hemispheres; such connections, however, don't cause a patient-specific difference in global brain lateralization, which prefers any one of the two networks (i.e. right-brained or left-brained). Lateralized networks in the brain, instead, demonstrate a local connection across research participants, with rather weak transformations from childhood to early adulthood, as well as minimal differences among males and females (Nielsen, Zielinski, Ferguson, Lainhart, & Anderson, 2013).