Thoughts on Why

The worst feeling is to feel a lack of control, to not know what will happen, to try, but still be uncertain of the outcome, especially when you depend on it.  I am one to meet challenges, to take them on and exceed expectations.  When it comes to my work ethic and willingness to try hard to achieve something, few can surpass me.  And perhaps this makes me appear smarter than I am, or perhaps it is what makes me smart.  Perhaps people have expectations of me that are unrealistic, and meeting these unrealistic expectations makes me nervous, like there is a truth to be revealed that will disappoint people.  There are some challenges that you can only work so hard to meet, and the rest depends on pure talent and luck.  And it's that part that I have no control over, the talent and luck, that worries me. 

It's easy to get caught up in competition.  It's easy to compare yourself to other people.  The statistics are available so you can see where you stand in the ranking.  It can be so frustrating to look and not see yourself where you want to be or to be uncertain, or to feel as though you are being held to another person's standards.  Someone may respond by saying, that's not what's important, the numbers don't matter...It's how you live life or it's your attitude or it's the experiences you have.  And while those things do matter too, when you depend on something, like a GRE score or a GPA, to get into graduate school, then the numbers do matter, at least to an extent.  There is no way to avoid putting yourself up against the others in competition.  There is no way to avoid being compared to your peers in the same field.  As much as you study, or try to study, so is everyone else you are competing with, and your future wavers on that point of competition.

The second part of the talk I went to... More brief, also more interesting (to me).

Often times word and face recognition are studied separately, without much thought to their similarities or relationship.  Face recognition is associated with the fusiform face area and word recognition is associated with visual word form area.  Neither of these systems are selective at birth, meaning we have to learn them (it would be a little strange is babies had word recognition when they were born, right?).  So basically what we get if we lesion the right fusiform gyrus (the fusiform face area) is prosopagnosia (the inability to recognize faces) and if you leasion the left fusiform gyrus (the visual word form area) you get alexia.  Interestingly enough, in both of these disorders, patients rely on bit by bit information.  For example, to recognize a word, an alexia patient will go letter by letter to spell it out and read it.

These areas, in the fusiform gyrus, are adjacent to retinotopic cortext nexts to the region of retinal cortex that recieves visual information, which makes good sense.  Further, faces and words are the two things tha we are probably most expert at recognizing, considering we spend a lot of our life looking at people and reading.  Both words and faces are based on pieces that form a whole.  Words are built by letters and a face has a nose, eyes, cheeks, a chin...  Thus structure depends on relative information.  What the brain is trying to do is recognize words/faces.  As I mentioned, these two types of recognition are often studied seperately, however, it seems to make a lot of sense, based on the information I have given, that they be studied together.  Both areas require visual acuity and both are adjacent to areas involving visual acuity (remember, the brain is constrained to local connectivity).  There is pressure, for some reason or another, for words to be in the left hemisphere and for faces to be in the right hemisphere.

Interestingly, studies with Alexia patients and Prosopagnosics have shown that propopagnosics also show some deficits in word recognition and alexic patients also show some deficits in face recognition, when compared to controls.    (although neither show as great of a deficit as in their own "dysfunctioning" domain)

...I think there are some far stretching implications for this type of research in other disorders, such as autism spectrum disorders where patients have a difficult time  looking at people, although can be excellent with recognition.  Maybe more on this later.

I attended a really interesting talk on this topic today.. Here's a little bit on what was presented:

How do we gather meaning from a word or string of words?  That is what semantics is all about.  One model suggests that semantic memory is an internal amodal representation that codes our general world knowledge.  In this model, visual information, tactile information, and auditory information are processed through a "semantics" area which gives output such as action, speaking, or words.  A second model suggests a more complicated version which is difficult to explain in words, but it posits that knowledge is tied to specific motor and perceptual systems, thus before visual input can lead to action, it must go through a visual semantic system, which intereacts with the verbal and tactile semantic systems.

Both of these models have issues though.  Consider optic aphasia, a disorder in which people have trouble naming a visually presented object.  This is not to be confused with visual agnosia or general anomia, two similar yet distinct disorders.  Optic aphasics can USE the objects correctly and they can also identify the object based on tactile information.  This disorder is specific to objects and does not transfer to ACTION.

Based on this disorder we have to discount the previous two models (if I had a diagram, this would be apparent, but just trust me on this one for now).  This moves us to a connectionist/parellel distrubted processing model.  In this model units of neurons update in parallel, so as they receive more information they are continually updating, strengthening connections etc...  Further, there is an internal representation that has a graded degree of specialization.  This has two implications.  The first is task systematicity: whether similar inputs map to similar outputs.  Consider for a second language.  Naming (or mapping from written words to meaning) is unsystematic, for example, cat sounds and looks an awful lot like cap but they do not mean the same thing.  Because units add up, they are strongly affected by systematics and thus slow at learning arbitrary mappings and arbitrary mappings will suffer more with damage (e.g. optic aphasia).  Usage, however, is more systematically related to structure, which is why an optic aphasic can still tell you what to DO with the object even if s/he cannot NAME it.

The second implication of this model is topography: spatial organization of representations in the brain.  The majority of the volume in the skull is made up of axons and learning favors short axons and connections,  For example, if EVERY neuron was connected to every other neuron in the brain and we layed the brain out flat, it would have a diameter of 12 miles.  That is just not feasible or practical!  Thus the brain is constrained to have local connectivity. 

There is a great diagram to go along with this.  Imagine a grid that represents neuronal units in the brain.  There is visual input coming in from one side and tactile information coming in from the other, actions are produced at the top of the grid and phonology is produced at the bottom of the grid.  To get object meaning, you must go from the input system (e.g. vision or tactile) to phonology.   In this system, optic aphasics then have lesions connecting the visual input to the phonological output, however, they can still produce actions because those local connections are not severed.  Action naming is thus in tact because the optic aphasic learns to use the action to produce the name of the action.

Autism is a mysterious disorder, often characterized by a person's impaired social interaction and communication.  For a long time, it has been believed that this is due to deficits in the areas of the brain that correlate with mirror neurons.  Mirror neurons are neurons that fire when we watch someone do something.  For example if you give the peace sign, there are neurons that will fire to correlate with not only watching that action, but doing that action.  This is thought to be involved with our ability to mimic and learn by watching others do.  However, recent fMRI studies have shown that there are no significant differences between mirror neurons in autistic individuals compared to a control group, suggesting that the theory of mirror neurons in autism may not be all it is cracked up to be.  Instead, they have found differences in within subject variability, where autistic subjects had a much higher rate of within subject variability than controls.  I think this is very promising.  It has long been known that autism is comorbid with epileptic disorders, so the random firings that are occurring, creating that within subject variability, make a lot of sense.  I also think that this relates to the fMRI technique itself.  The BOLD signal measures blood oxygen levels, not neural activity itself.  While we can be fairly certain that an increase in blood oxygen to one area of the brain correlates with neural activity, this is not a fact by any means.  I think that perhaps there are different signalling mechanisms occurring within autistics, where perhaps the local mechanisms that increase blood flow are not correlated in the same way to neural activity as in controls.  More on this later!

January 2008-

***

Piercing sun of blindness
above, aside, behind us
and while our eyes have lost sight
our souls are anything but finite
wander within the walls of skin
with only the truth compass guiding
the brain and heart and flesh
tear inside until they mesh
each individually becoming one
a meditation which one can rarely summon

***

A rose glow in my room
softens the glaring gloom
gulping, gasping for air
as I was dwelling in my despair
beauty envelops inch by inch
leaving anguish the smallest pinch
allowing things to continue
with the intent of the beginning

***

The closer I get to my skin
the less I can see it
The more I lay dorment in bed
the less I want to leave it
the more intoxicated with juice I am
the less I want to stop sipping it
the more indulgences I find
the less I want to resist them

***

Into my veins it poured
My insides screamed and roared
blood stormed from my eyse
not allowing any disguise
trembling, losing control
like a scar I couldn't close
my lips thirsted for more
numbing the feelings I ignore.

***

Translation of an idea that rests clearly in my
frontal cortex.  Has a meaning I hold dear
with the words I know and fear.  But to say
these words to you or him could set disaster
or misconstrue the sort of thing that I thought through
with careful caution that's utmost due
and with the pensive idea I knew, you realize
another through the uniquenss of a perspective
unlike mine or his and now this conception
originally developed by one becomes anew
with ingredients I wouldn't care to brew or
even know with what to do or how to say and
here again we make attempts to convey
and as I try to elaborate...you lose the meaning
in translation

***

The rain won't patter on the roof
but that doesn't mean it won't
make a sound as it scatters
through the leaves.   The roof
is made rain-sound proof but
the wind and air give it away
when the sun isn't shining it's
probably pouring, but if it is
rain's never exempt.  It's
probable the rain will come
falling, but it's probable that
it won't actually last.  The
rain at home has a stigma of
sadness.  But it also represents
growth.  The here rain is steamy and
comes like madness but to me
it represent hope, because
after the rain the air becomes
lighter and after the rain
the sun is always radiating
after the rain, i grow higher
and it's beauty illuminates
only the good truths

***

Here for now, hair glows
liberated brain from
substance and substantial pain
brown skin surrounds new
blue eyes as they rest finding
peace.  as they wonder about
what may change.  will their
demeanor remain or will
agitation dominate?  Is
there a static cause or is
the bad stuff finally gone?

***

Grow me a tree
in the middle of a field.
Let it breath but
Don' leave it alone.
That tree will be my
family.  It will be
my hope.  It will
learn to reach out
towards sun to
perpetuate its growth.
The tree will teach
me life.  It will
show me reality.
It will be stable.
So I'll always have
something I can hold.

November 2008

Open up, my sky appears
as leaves laugh falling
and tumbling.  Blue turns
steely.  Here I am under
branches as naked as I am
letting myself be.  Now
they lie under me, crackling
as I breathe.  Air enters
my lungs with a small pang
my eyes wide my lips cool
and dry every bit filling
up with the day with
warmth in the cooling
air and mysterious comfort
from somewhere foreign.

June 2009

Blood ripples in my skin
like water pouring over pebbles

my heart won't stay
restfully in its constraining
cavity as though it was water
boiling over on a stove top

the neurons that connect
to you fire with the rapidity
of water rushing down the falls

hormones are pouring
into my veins
like the river cascades into the ocean

I simply flow to you.

Here at CMU, everything is centered around computer science and computation.  It is an excellent opportunity to expand my skill set and do research in a new setting.  I feel, though, that I am not really get out of it what I wish to.  I have been here for almost three weeks and I have attended some amazing talks and participated in three of the studies, as well as helped to run subjects, generate some images, and improve stimuli.  But that doesn't seem like much to show for three weeks.  It seems as though everyone is self-involved and does not want to delegate anything to me, or the other new undergrad in the lab. 

Another interesting dynamic is that the other undergrad goes to Yale University, which holds a prestigious stigma.  This other undergrad has no experience working in a lab, but as soon as people hear him say "I go to Yale" they are just effusive.  I feel like people wonder why I'm there.  How did I get in?  It's like everything he says holds magic to it.  I don't understand.

I also am slightly frustrated that the research internship is less focused on neuroscience than I had anticipated.  And when people do ask for insight on certain things as we analyze things like fMRI data, they don't really care about the answers.  Then why did you ask?

What makes us an expert at something?  How do we define "expert"?  And by calling someone an expert, does that really make them an expert?  In Malcom Gladwells's book "Blink" he talks about experts as people who are good at what he calls "thin-slicing."  For example, an experienced police officer will be more apt at making decisions about whether a suspect is dangerous and he should shoot.  The classic example of this is the Diallo case, where four officers saw a man of color acting "suspiciously."  What they didn't know was that Diallo didn't really know English all that well so when they told him not to move, they were the police, he did not understand, and in fact, thought they might be dangerous.  When he reached into his pocket to get his wallet to give to them, they thought he was pulling out a gun and the officers opened fire and ended up shooting him 41 times.  In another example, a more experienced officer confronted a teenaged boy.  The boy reached into his pants to pull out a gun, and something told the officer not to shoot in a situation where many others might have shot.  When the boy pulled out the gun though, he immediately dropped it.  This officer did something very differently from the other four, less experienced officers.  He paid attention to the Right cues...The boy was clearly afraid, so was Diallo, but the four officers were blinded by his color--they didn't pay attention to his face.  This is only a snippet of many good examples of how an expert or experienced person in a field might react as opposed to a novice.

One thing to expand on this that I would propose deals with the constant influx of perceptual information.  So many things come at us every second: visual, auditory, sensory, olfactory, and taste information, not to mention higher oredered thinking and proprioception.  Somehow we manage to integrate and use this information in meaningful ways.  What makes us an expert at something is how well we encode this information, integrate it, and use it. 

I think that one thing that our society gets caught up in is thinking more is better.  Well, in fact, I would argue that if you really want to be good at something you might argue the opposite.  The more information we have to integrate, the more time and energy it takes.  If we want to be good at something and be able to react quickly to something we need to pick up only the most pertinent information and use it effectively.  I would like to address this in two ways.  The first is another example from Malcom Gladwell and the second is an example from a talk I saw today at a Psychology symposium on video games.  The example that Gladwell gives is how we decide who needs what attention in the ER and more specifically when it comes to heart attack patients.  At Cook County Hospital in Chicago, there were a LOT of patients coming into the ER complaining about heart pain and not very much space.  Of course in the medical profession it is important to exercise caution, however, with so little space and money, there is a degree to which you can't allow every patient coming in complaining of heart pain to take up your space.  Physicians and nurses would ask the patients a lot of questions about their history (exercise, cholesterol, nutrition, past heart attacks etc...), listened to their heart, and did an EKG, among other things in order to establish how much further care they needed and at what risk they were of having a life threatening situation.  Basically, the physicians and nurses were gathering a lot of information because More is better, right?   Unfortunately, physicians were not very good at predicting which patients needed the most care.  Lee Goldman recognized this problem and instead of just sitting around he decided to come up with a solution.  Goldman ended up developing a formula using FOUR pieces of information to predict which patients needed to use which resources depending on the severity of their condition as predicted by his formula and it worked extremely well.  This is an excellent case of using less information to make better decisions.

The next example I want to use involves high action video games.  One question we ask when we talk about experts is whether or not their knowledge is transferable.  In other words, if they are very good at one thing, will they be very good at other things.  One hypothsis suggests that the transfer of knowledge is promoted by complex learning environments, an example of which is action video games.  When people play video games they have to react quickly to a lot of visual information.  This can relate to things like driving...When we drive we have to react to a lot of visual information quickly.  So what makes some of us better drivers than others?  One thing is practice.  They say to be an expert at something you need to invest 10,000 hours of intentional practice.  Well, that is a very large number, but as they say, "no pain, no gain."  While it does take a lot of work to be an expert, we can actually get quite good at things relatively quickly.  Relating back to the topic at hand, when subjects practiced a high action video game versus a more strategy based video game for 10 hours there was an effect of video game on the subject's ability to do a visual search/memory task.  It is a little more complex than that, but the essential idea boils down to this.  Think of your brain as holding a whole bunch of different solutions and when you are choosing your response based on incoming sensory information and integration you have to choose the optimal solution based on that information.  While all of us may come to the correct solution, some of us come to it a lot more quickly than others.  This is important because when you are doing something like driving you  need to be able to react quickly!  So when we do things like play video games somehow we get better at either encoding, integrating, or executing our decision based on Baye's optimal solution.  I would suggest that because of the practice there is stengthening between synapses (Long term potentiation?) leading to a higher base level of activation meaning it requires less activation to encode sensory information and also increased myelenation of the axonal connections (due to activity of oligodendrocytes (sp?)) between the areas of the brain integrating the information that leads to enhanced integration of the sensory information ultimately leading to a faster response.  Also, the more you practice soemthing, the more you understand what is important and what sensory information needs to be integrated to find the optimal solution/response-thus less information=more.

I think this is only the beginning of understand what makes us an expert at something and there are a lot more examples and models that can be used to study different aspects of expertise.  Personally, I am interested in what's happening at a neurological level as I think it has implications in many areas of psychology, such as decision making, memory, learning, and sensorimotor applications.  Perhaps more on this later..

When we are presented with a visual stimuli task and asked to make a decision based on that presentation we must go through perceptual (encode + identify) and cognitive (response selection + response execution) processes.  When that task involves memory, we also must select among differing strategies in order to find the correct response.  When we decide how to answer the question or respond to the task, we must evaluate whether the question is familiar, in which case it would be most beneficial to search the memory for the answer, or whether it is unfamiliar, in which case we would have to calculate the answer (for example, a math problem).  Much of this processing involving familiarity takes place rather quickly and in the subconscious (<200ms).  This "feeling of knowing" component to the strategy selection when we make a decision based on our previous experience, or memory, of the task at hand has several interesting implications.  The frontal lobes are crucial to memory monitoring (familiarity based) processes and the parietal lobes are associated with recollection based processes.  Recent studies have shown that our unconscious is aware of the familiarity of a stimuli much sooner than it enters conscious awareness.  There have also been hemispheric differences in the processing of "feeling of knowing" where there is a stronger presentation in the right hemisphere.  Essentially, our strategy selection is associated with perceptual processing of stimuli rather than cognitive processing.

This leads me to ask several questions.  For example, when we are taking a multiple choice test and we can't consciously recall the answer to the question, but we have a gut feeling, or a "feeling of knowing" that leads us to choose the correct response... could this be due to the perceptual processes involved in memory and familiarity?  Similarly, in relationships, is there a "feeling of knowing" based on perceptual processes that we are unaware of that leads us to choose a particular mate?  How do things like smell, emotion, and conscious awareness affect our decisions?

In further studies on short term memory it has been shown that subjects presented with a list of paired words and then distributed midazolam, a drug that induces transient anterograde amnesia, have facilitated recall of the list presented prior to the drug when compared to a saline condition.  Sleep, alcohol, and benzodiasepines (such as midazolam) all act as retrgrade enhancers of memory.  This may be due to less interference as subjects in the drug condition are impaired from forming new memories.  It has also been posited that benzodiazepine frees up the hippocampus to better consolidate previously learned material.  However, under the drug condition, rehearsal of the list did not improve the subjects memory of the list, when compared to control subjects.    Moreover, it has been shown that under the drug condition, subjects still retain short term memory and can learn a series of numbers and regurgitate them within a short period of time.  Thus there is evidence that short term memory binding occurs somewhere other than long term memory binding (in the hippocampus).  One hypothesis suggests that short term memory binding occurs in the frontal cortex. 

What does this all mean?  If we still retain the ability to bind things in our short term memory, is there a way in which repetition will create a sense of memory, only in a different location?  Also, considering that implicit memory seems to stay in tact in anterograde amnesia, is there a way to turn an explicit memory into an implicit one?  How much plasticity exists in the brain?

The first thing we do when we meet someone is tell them our name; it is part of our “meeting new people schema.”  Names are an important part of a person’s identity.  My name, Kameko, means tortoise in Japanese.  The tortoise is a symbol of longevity and felicity; I am driven by my future and aim to live a life of happiness in the pursuit of knowing myself better every day.  I am defined by my work ethic and my drive to learn, grow, and discover.  From my childhood, through middle school and high school, and now in college, I have grown through my everyday experiences, through my friends and family, and through struggling with my father’s illness and death.

I was born in Madison, Wisconsin and grew up in a small town nearby called Waunakee.  I lived out in the country, surrounded by nature and spent a significant portion of my summers at a place my family called “the farm.”  The farm played a big part in my life, developing my love of nature, peace, and family.  Before my family owned the farm, the house consisted of a small log cabin that needed a lot of work.  My parents started putting that work into the farm a little before I was born, and after I was born I became a part of that work force, helping plant trees, working in the garden, and enjoying the natural life.  Over the years my father and grandfather restored the land around the farm, and it is now all native plants.  Even though I grew up in Waunakee, the farm is the place I connect with as home.

            My mother grew up in a large, close-knit family—one that all of us are blessed to be a part of.  She has seven brothers and sisters, almost all with careers in education or social work.  My mother is a high school special education teacher, and it is from her that I have learned patience and kindness.  She never ceases to impress me with her love.  My father grew up working on a farm and overtook a lot of the responsibilities when my grandpa decided to go to school because the farming business was no longer where he wanted to be.  My grandpa went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and graduated first in his class.  At this time, my father’s family moved to Michigan where my grandfather took a job at Ford.  My dad attended undergraduate school at Michigan State and then attended Indiana University for law school.  He spent much of his life in law, working in the trust departments of banks.  When my dad turned about 50 he finally realized his dream of being a small business owner and he bought a business.  My dad has not only pushed me and helped me to develop a strong work ethic, but he has also shown me that you should always follow your dreams and that it is never too late to start.  I have one younger brother.  In a lot of ways we are similar; in other ways we mirror each other.  He has always tended to be the outgoing one, and I have always tended to be the quiet one.  Nevertheless, growing up together, we have developed a strong relationship by bonding through athletics, music, and, of course, family.

            I always loved to play sports, and still have a love of athletics, particularly running, today.  I have participated in soccer, dance, swimming, track and field, cross country, racquetball, and basketball.  In high school, swimming was the one sport that really stuck.  I wasn’t actually that fast; in fact, I wasn’t the best on the team by a long shot.  What I liked about swimming was that it was both an individual and a team sport.  I felt as though I bonded strongly with the other girls on the swim team; we always built each other up.  We fought, struggled, and worked hard together, four hours a day, and that made us unbreakable.  Swimming was a growing experience for me.  I learned a lot from my teammates, as well as from my coach and from myself.  Each year, my work ethic developed more and more.  As a sophomore I was doing a set of 100 yard sprints.  Every few 100’s, the time in which I had to complete the distance went down—in other words, every few sprints, I had to pick up my pace and go faster.  I got to a certain point and I couldn’t do it anymore—I stopped making the interval.  But my coach wouldn’t let me stop.  He pushed me to keep going and going and he wouldn’t let up until I made it—and eventually I did.  I don’t know how I did it, after pushing myself further into exhaustion after each 100, but somehow my mind beat my body.  Up until then I had worked hard, but after that point I worked really hard—I had shown myself that I can push my limits.  It was because of my unwillingness to be contained by limits that I was captain of the swim team my senior year and was asked to continue with the Waunakee swim program as a coach.

            Aside from athletics, another hobby of mine that has persisted over the years is writing.  In fourth grade, we would have small assignments along with our reading for the day, and we were supposed to mix it up and do different things, but I always asked if I could write a poem about the reading.  I accumulated so many poems that I can’t even count them.  My desire to better myself must have started at some point before fourth grade, because during fourth grade, while I was writing all of those poems, I took a folder of them to my third grade teacher to look at and make comments on.  As I got older, I mostly enjoyed writing for myself, as a means of self discovery and learning.  Writing was a way for me to organize my thoughts and put things into perspective, and journaling has become an important part of my life.  If I don’t know what to do, I’ll start writing about it.  Writing has helped me grow as a person by allowing me to record my goals, remember my thoughts, and sort out my feelings.

            Writing and athletics have been my two major outlets throughout my life, particularly in the last few years as I have dealt with my dad’s illness and death.  When I was a junior in high school my dad was diagnosed with stage four metastatic melanoma, after being misdiagnosed almost a year earlier with non-threatening seborrheic keratosis.  Of all my family, my dad was the most similar to me—both of us were hard working, quiet, competitive, and caring—so needless to say the news was devastating.  As an otherwise extremely fit and healthy person, a fighter, he participated in a medical trial at the National Institution of Health, making a wonderful candidate for the treatment.  Unfortunately, his cancer metastasized to his lungs and brain and he passed away on March 17^th, 2007, during my freshman year at St. Olaf College.  My dad was incredibly strong and it wasn’t until one of the tumors in his brain started to bleed in February that he started to deteriorate.  I have never experienced something so difficult as to watch the most active and independent man I know lose his ability to speak and walk on his own.  One of the last things my dad said to me was to go back to school and work hard.  I remember the day my dad died.  I was at school when my mom called me to tell me the news, and I have never been so grateful that my best friend from grade school went to St. Olaf, too.  That night, I went for the hardest run of my life.  I think my dad would be proud of me now; every semester I work hard, improving both my study habits and my grades, constantly building on what works for me as a student and as a person.

            Of course, it is still painful to think about what my dad suffered through.  But with my friends, family, athletics, and writing, I have learned to cope with my dad’s death and be successful in spite of it.  It is easy to want to give up, but my dad would not want that, and ultimately, I don’t want that either. 

To be successful, I have devoted myself to my studies in psychology and neuroscience, going further than just the basic curriculum and participating in several research opportunities. I first became interested in research during a research methods class in which I worked collaboratively on a project looking at jealousy in romantic relationships.  We continued this project in our free time the next semester and presented our results at Minnesota Undergraduate Psychology Conference (MUPC).  After my experience in research methods, I also enrolled in independent research, where I studied the effect of language on color identification using a lateralized presentation of visual stimuli.  I spent two semesters working on this project, and am still working on it today.  The results of this study were included in a Psychonomics Society presentation in the fall of 2008, and I plan to present the results at MUPC this spring, along with another pilot project I worked on in my psychophysiology course this past interim.  Doing research has been a great opportunity for me, as it has allowed me to study things in greater depth than any course can allow.  I have become a better rounded student because of research, and my experiences have allowed me to become a mentor to younger students who are interested in pursuing research as an undergraduate to help them obtain their goals of a higher education.

I hope to continue doing research, as I believe it has practical benefits for both me and others.  This summer I will be participating in a research internship at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh studying at memory.  I am particularly excited about this, as I believe memory is a growing area of importance with diseases such as Alzheimer’s affecting so many individuals.  It will also give me the opportunity to expand my research skills and broaden my experiences in psychology and neuroscience.

Along with my goal of pursuing a doctoral degree in psychology, I hope to spend some time in the Peace Corps after graduating.  I recently read the book “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch, a man who was asked to give his last lecture while he was dying from cancer.  “The Last Lecture” is a book about pursuing and fighting for your dreams and growing as a person.  When I was in high school it was one of my dreams to join the Peace Corps and be a humanitarian as I travel the world.  Thus far, I have traveled a little, spending an interim staying with a family in Martinique while studying French.  I still haven’t achieved my dream of working in the Peace Corps and feel as though if there is ever a place to grow and learn as a person, while working for the betterment of society, it is in the Peace Corps.  As I have learned from my father, it is never too late to pursue your dreams, and I am excited to embrace the opportunities that come along and allow me to live my dreams and discover new ones.