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Pre Experiment

Ethics in Research

  1. Check the privacy rules on this  website.
  2. You should submit a data management plan to the Research and Policy Support (REPS) Team (research.data.fgb@vu.nl). You can find more information on this  website.
  3. Research has to comply with the code of ethics for research at the FGB (NETHICS), which can be found on this  website.
  4. With regards to ethical approval, an umbrella ethics application for standard cognitive experiments in the lab - including online experimenting and VR - has been approved  by the Ethical Review Board (VCWE) in September 2021 and is valid for 5 years. If you are a researcher in the section Cognitive Psychology and your research does not deviate from this protocol , you do not need to request separate approval. In this case, you can use the approved consent form  and information letter  templates and add study-specific information. With regards to the information letter, you can use this document  to add method-specific text.
  5. If you are not a researcher working in the section Cognitive Psychology and/or for any deviations from the standard protocol, you can apply for an amendment at the VCWE. You then upload this protocol and explain what you will add/do differently. In case your research deviates hugely you need to get your own research protocol approved by VCWE. To prepare a new ethics application, you can find participant-information-letter-template and informed-consent-templates and a GDPR checklist on this website .

Request a Project Account

To run experiments in the lab and use the lab computers, you should request a project account. This can be requested by sending an email to the Lab Coordinator(c.cengiz@vu.nl) or to bblabs.fgb@vu.nl. Each new project requires a new account. This means that if you want to start a different project, you need to request a new project account. This project account can be used by multiple people working on the same project. With this research account you can log into every computer at the VU Brain & Behaviour lab. You can also log into different PCs at the same time. The steps for requesting an account: 

  1. Send an e-mail to the Lab Coordinator or bblabs.fgb@vu.nl that you would like to have a new project account.
  2. You will receive a response mail with a link to a form for filling out information.  
  3. Once you filled in the form, send a response that you have filled the form in along with a password of minimum 7 characters. 
  4. You will receive a confirmation mail with your username/Short Project Name and your password. You can now use it to log into the PCs. 

Once you have your account, check out the Lab Help folder that everyone has on their desktop by default. Most of the software necessary is also present by default.

If you need anything in particular that is not on there already, contact the Lab Coordinator or anyone else from the Lab Team. Do this in a timely manner! 

For more detailed information about (default) project accounts, check the page on Project Accounts.

Lab Access

If you do not have access to the lab on your VU employee card, then you can request this at the TO3 Helpdesk. The room number is B-659 (MF-builing, sixth floor). Opening hours of the TO3 Helpdesk are Monday-Thursday from 09:00 to 17:00 and on Friday from 09:00 to 16:00. Before you go there, discuss your access request with the Lab Coordinator since they need to approve it. Students cannot have lab access on their cards and need to request keycards for each booking (or the supervisor needs to request it for them via Labservant). 

If at any time your access card is not working, try updating it by holding it against the lock at the front entrance of the lab. This may fix your problem. If the problem persists, visit the TO3 Helpdesk.

In the case of (student) research assistants, it is possible to request an employee access card through this  link.

Access Outside Opening Hours 

You will need to request additional access on your card and inform VU Security about when you would like to get access to the lab outside of the opening hours. The steps for requesting this access can be found in our Guideline .

Recruiting Participants

Participants can be recruited via walk-ins or via the online Sona system . You can also place brochures of your experiment in the waiting room of the Brain & Behaviour Lab (A-431) or on bulletin boards around VU Campus. Additionally, we also put links to studies in the Ongoing Studies section of this website. Previously, there was the option to use Telegram for recruiting participants; this option has been discontinued! 

Sona 

If you do not have a Sona-account yet, please contact subjectpool.fgb@vu.nl. After receiving a Sona-account, you can create a study on Sona with the available time slots and have people register for your research. Participants can apply for credits (1.5 per minute in the lab, or 1 per minute online) or for money (10 euros per hour). For more detailed information on participant handling please see the following manual  (2024/2025.)

 

Reserving Lab Spaces

For making bookings and reservations of lab spaces, we make use of Labservant . Anyone from the FGB Department can make use of Labservant. It might be somewhat difficult to navigate so we have step-by-steps instructions on how to make a booking:

Check this document  for the most up-to-date booking instructions and guidelines. 

  1. Please open your browser, navigate to Labservant , and log in using your VU-ID credentials. Navigate to Lending Desk.
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  1. In the Lending Desk, click on ‘+Create new booking’ in the right lower corner.
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  1. Search for the room you need:
    • If you write 'Brain' as a search term, you will see all the keycards AND rooms of the Lab.
    • You can also just look up a specific room if you know which one you need. 
    • Multipurpose/VR labs can be found under the search term: 'Multicubicle'
    • EEG labs can be found under the search term: 'B447'
    • Eyelink labs can be found under the search term: 'B449'
      *note that you can make use of both EEG/Eyelink in the rooms of B447 & B449
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All rooms start with "EQ018... MF-...." (e.g., "EQ018159 MF-B447A EEG + Eyelink") and all keycards starts with "EQ017... Keycard MF-...." (e.g., "EQ017671 Keycard MF-B447 EEG-01"). 

Any room/keycard that does NOT start with "EQ01...." is old and invalid. Please pay attention to not select any of these!

  1. Select the room, adjust the date and time and provide information of your booking. Make sure to select and fill out both the start and end times separately. In order to see your booking and availabilities you must move to your desired date manually using the arrows in black. 

  2. Never make a booking spanning multiple days. If you want to make a booking for the same space and time period for consecutive days, then select "Recurrence: daily" under "Recurrence" period. You can also do this weekly, however the booking slots cannot differ and, generally, you may not make bookings of more than 2 weeks in advance unless otherwise discussed with the Lab Coordinator.
  3. Press submit > you will receive a mail if your booking has been approved or declined. If declined, you can read in the mail why it has been declined.
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When booking a lab space, check whether you are booking the space/room and not (just) the Keycard for the room. If you only select the Keycard, the room will NOT be reserved!

Cancellation of Booking

Go to the home page > click on the shortcut to the lending desk > click on 'go to your booking overview' > click on the booking you want to delete (the text becomes bold, the booking is selected) > click on the 'edit' button in the bottom right corner > click on the 'delete' button in the bottom right corner

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