Hi! This section describes research projects that I have worked on in the fields of neuroscience and neuro-oncology.
Primate Research. 2005-2006
I subsequently studied task-switching at MIT’s Picower Institute. For this project, I designed and programmed tasks, trained rhesus macaques to switch between them, and analyzed the macaques performance. Autism. 2004
The summer after my freshman year of college, I worked at the University of Wisconsin-Madison using fMRI to study the differences in brain activity and gaze between autistic and neurotypical people when engaged in face and object recognition. [1] These differences were correlated with eye-tracking data to determine the relationship between gaze focus and brain activation. Understanding of these differences could be used to improve autism treatment and diagnose autism earlier. Neuro-oncology. 2001-2002
Starting after my sophomore year of high school, I volunteered at the Hermelin Brain Tumor Institute, looking for microheterogeneity in oligodendrogliomas. The next summer, I attended the Research Science Institute, where I used statistical analysis to identify trends in the asymmetries between vestibular schwannomas in neurofibromatosis 2. Since vestibular schwannomas are treated differently depending on size and speed of growth and oligodendrogliomas are treated differently depending on phenotype, analyzing trends may help physicians determine appropriate treatments. For my neurofibromatosis research, I was named a semi-finalist in the Siemens-Westinghouse Competition. References
[1] Andrea Hawksley, “To Understand Amy: One Student’s Path into Autism Research,” Imagine Magazine 12(4), March/April, 2005.
I subsequently studied task-switching at MIT’s Picower Institute. For this project, I designed and programmed tasks, trained rhesus macaques to switch between them, and analyzed the macaques performance. Autism. 2004
The summer after my freshman year of college, I worked at the University of Wisconsin-Madison using fMRI to study the differences in brain activity and gaze between autistic and neurotypical people when engaged in face and object recognition. [1] These differences were correlated with eye-tracking data to determine the relationship between gaze focus and brain activation. Understanding of these differences could be used to improve autism treatment and diagnose autism earlier. Neuro-oncology. 2001-2002
Starting after my sophomore year of high school, I volunteered at the Hermelin Brain Tumor Institute, looking for microheterogeneity in oligodendrogliomas. The next summer, I attended the Research Science Institute, where I used statistical analysis to identify trends in the asymmetries between vestibular schwannomas in neurofibromatosis 2. Since vestibular schwannomas are treated differently depending on size and speed of growth and oligodendrogliomas are treated differently depending on phenotype, analyzing trends may help physicians determine appropriate treatments. For my neurofibromatosis research, I was named a semi-finalist in the Siemens-Westinghouse Competition. References
[1] Andrea Hawksley, “To Understand Amy: One Student’s Path into Autism Research,” Imagine Magazine 12(4), March/April, 2005.