Foundations of Citizen Science
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Stall Catchers
Stall Catchers
Accelerate Alzheimer's research by playing an online game. Make at least one classification and return here.
The Stall Catchers project is designed by researchers at Cornell University to advance Alzheimer’s solutions. This project focuses on one aspect of the disease: reduced blood flow in the brain.
This symptom of Alzheimer’s has been known about for years, but, until now, nobody knew why reduced blood flow happens in the brain. Researchers are now finding a connection between blood flow and memory. We need your help for researchers to understand this relationship further.
You can help by playing a simple game: view short videos from the brains of mice and “catch” stalls. We will teach you how to score blood vessels as “flowing” or “stalled.” Even the most powerful computer technologies can’t do this accurately enough yet, but your keen eyes can help us process decades worth of data.
Your participation can help us fully understand how stalls are contributing to Alzheimer’s and discover potential treatment targets.
It's important to use the same email address you used to create your SciStarter account when you create your Stall Catchers account . You'll see a brief online, interactive training before you start analyzing the data.
Photo credit: Human Computation Institute (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Materials Needed
Smartphone, tablet, or computer
Internet access
SciStarter LIVE: Stall Catchers: The #1 Project on SciStarter in 2022
SciStarter LIVE: Citizen Science Month Outcomes from Stall Catchers
SciStarter LIVE #84: Play a game with us to Accelerate Alzheimer's Research!
Step 1
Sign up for SciStarter or log in. Your contributions will get credited in your SciStarter Dashboard.
Step 2
Click the “Participate” button below these steps and you will be prompted to open a new tab to visit the Stall Catchers project website. The rest of the steps below tell you how to use the Stall Catchers site, so keep this tab OPEN.
Step 3
On the Stall Catchers website, click the orange button “Join Now!” to sign up with the SAME EMAIL (CASE SENSITIVE) that you used to create your SciStarter account. Your username will be visible to other Stall Catchers users on a leaderboard.
Step 4
Watch the tutorial video and start testing your ability to recognize stalled blood flow. These brief ultrasound "movies" show blood moving through the brain of a mouse with Alzheimer’s.
Step 5
An orange circle will highlight the area you need to observe. See a stall in a blood vessel? Click the red “Stalled” button, then click on the blood vessel where you see the stall. If blood appears to be moving freely through the vessel, click the green “Flowing” button.
Step 6
Feel free to continue classifying until you get the hang of it. And don’t worry about classifying stalls incorrectly; the system accounts for that through leveraging the power of the crowd. Training credit for this activity will be counted after 1 accurate classification.
Step 7
Check out the leaderboard to see how your contributions rank compared to other Stall Catchers participants. Remember that these collective contributions are speeding up data processing that would otherwise take decades; every little bit helps.
Step 8
When you are done, return to the SciStarter.org/Training-Foundations page and continue your journey towards earning a badge.
Participate
Verify Your Email
Check your email (including spam!) and click on the provided link.
Until then, you won't be able to earn badges, or access other members-only features, but you can still browse thousands of projects and events!
