Answer
Key for
Writing
a Research Paper – The Introduction
Achieving functional ambulation is a goal unmet by many people who have sustained a spinal cord injury or other upper motor neuron dysfunction. By exploring new therapies, researchers have begun to challenge some of the conventional wisdom about the recovery potential of the spinal cord. One such therapy, the supported treadmill ambulation training (STAT) program, involves unloading a portion of the patient's weight while gait training the subject on a treadmill. By participating in this therapy many people have experienced substantial gains in ambulatory abilities.1-3
Earlier research has shown that mammals such as cats have been trained to improve their gait on a treadmill even after a complete spinal cord transection.4,5 Cats who received treadmill training improved their maximum gait speed by a factor of eight, while those who did not participate in the training only improved their gait speed by a factor of three.4 These results suggest that the spinal cord is capable of learning and have motivated researchers to try treadmill training with humans who have sustained a spinal cord injury or other upper motor neuron dysfunction.
The
success of the STAT program depends on many factors: a commitment by the patient to the protocol, trained
therapists, and appropriate equipment. One
of the reasons STAT has not been implemented in clinical practice is that
there is a great deal of confusion among clinical practitioners regarding the
equipment required to successfully train patients.|
This technical note is presented in an attempt to identify key hardware
and the features needed for a successful application.
Questions:
1)
What is the purpose of the two sentences about cats in the second
paragraph?
These sentences serve as the literature review for the paper (notice the endnote reference numbers). Also, they help to illustrate that this general research area is an important area of inquiry in the field of ambulation.
2)
What is the gap in knowledge that this paper addresses?
How do the authors signal this?
The gap is that clinical practitioners do not know the proper equipment needed to use this therapy correctly. The authors state this directly in the second sentence of the third paragraph.
3)
What do you expect to come next in the paper?
To a large extent, the content of the next section depends on the field or the journal. Some subject areas require a literature review after the introduction. However, in this case, we can see that the literature review is included in the introduction, which means there will probably not be one in the body of the paper. Instead, based on the content of the last paragraph, I expect that the next section will either describe the STAT therapy in more detail or will go straight into the equipment specifications. That will depend on the authors’ assumptions on the part of their audience – if they assume their audience is knowledgeable about STAT, then they will not describe it and will move directly into the equipment specifications.