This synopsis for Trial 3: Traumatic Brain Injury is provided as an overview for TEACHERS. We advise teachers NOT to
hand this out to the students prior to playing the adventure since much of the suspense will be eliminated.
Synopsis [ 45 KB pdf ]
Players begin the simulation by learning their goal is to help experts test two new drugs for treating traumatic brain injury. To complete the goal, players will work with two experts: a Clinical Trials Training Director and a Principal Investigator.
TRAINING DIRECTOR'S OFFICE:
The Training Director greets the player and requests his/her help in conducting experiments to test two new drugs for treating
traumatic brain injury (TBI). The Training Director instructs the player to pick up the tablet where he/she learns about the
biomedical research process and then answers a question in the notebook on their tablet. Throughout the simulation, players are prompted to answer open-ended questions in the notebook. At the end of the simulation the contents of the notebook can be saved to the player's computer desktop as a PDF for printing.
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR'S OFFICE:
The Principal Investigator reveals that he is a Neurobiologist specializing in TBI. He has identified two drugs, Drug A and Drug B, as potential treatments for TBI and needs help conducting a
Morris water maze experiment testing the effectiveness of the drugs in rats.
Before conducting the experiment, the player learns about TBI, the brain regions affected, and that
dopamine is the neurotransmitter involved in
cognition. After exploring the
dopamine neurotransmission process, the player learns that during a TBI damage to neurons can disrupt dopamine signaling, leading to a decrease in cognition. The player then uses a dopamine simulator to manipulate neurons and determine that increasing dopamine receptors and increasing dopamine release can bring dopamine neurotransmission back into the normal range after neuron damage. The player then learns that although it is unknown exactly how Drug A and Drug B work, that this could be how the drugs enhance dopamine signaling and improve cognition.
After learning about the
3 Rs as ethical guideline for working with animals and passing a short quiz, the player gets approval to work with animals and is ready to set up and conduct the Morris water maze experiment. The player learns that the Morris water maze is a behavioral procedure used to test a rat's
spatial memory, which is a part of cognition, and how the procedure is conducted. The player then formulates hypotheses to test Drug A and Drug B, determine the number of groups needed to test the hypotheses, reviews the experiment schedule, and then conducts the Morris water maze procedure on rats with a TBI. After reviewing the results from the experiment, the player must determine if their hypotheses are supported or not supported by the data.
TRAINING DIRECTOR'S OFFICE:
The player reports back to the Training Director's office to review the biomedical research process and learn that the next step in the process is human clinical trials. Players then have the opportunity to revise their open-ended responses in the notebook. The simulation ends with the knowledge that amantadine, a drug suspected to affect dopamine neurotransmission, is commonly the most prescribed treatment for severe TBI and clinical trials have demonstrated the drug's ability to accelerate recovery and improve cognition in patients who have experienced a TBI.
