A "Typical" Day

As I'm nearing the end of the program, it's amazing to think back to the beginning and all that I've accomplished this summer. As I mentioned in my first post, after our week-long orientation, we dove right into lab work. I came into my lab just as Eric, my daily mentor, was beginning to implement the experiment that I'm presenting in a week (eek!).

My lab experience from this summer was very different from most of my friends', since it's a cognitive neuroscience lab. We don't have a single test tube or Bunsen burner in sight (though we do have a syringe for the electrode gel used during EEG experiments). Nor do we have a dress code requiring closed toed shoes or pants; we just need to look nice for when subjects come in to do the experiments. During orientation, our instructors stressed the importance of keeping a lab notebook, but since we're not doing complicated procedures where putting in too much of a chemical could mess up the results, I just have a regular spiral notebook to record anything I deem important or interesting, and issues that come up while experimenting (say, a participant falling asleep in the fMRI scanner--it has happened!) are recorded in binders, one for each study. Since we did an entire experiment in 8 or so weeks, with me working full-time, it's also worth noting that my experience is fairly different from that of a student researcher working part-time in a lab over several years.

For the most part, I worked standard hours, coming in a little after 9 and leaving around 5 or 5:30, with the majority of that time spent at a computer. Initially, I worked on programming the experiment, using a software program called E-Prime. It sets up the various screens of instructions and stimuli that a participant sees, and also takes care of recording their responses when they press keys.

After some revisions, I began running subjects on the experiment (this summer, I also tested participants on a couple other studies that the lab is conducting). As I wrote earlier, it was difficult having people sign up via the usual method, so I ended up working around 2 extra hours every night, testing people from my program. During that time, I also wrote scripts that sorted the data into the different categories we need, using a programming language called Python. It's a fairly easy language to pick up, but pretty frustrating when a tiny error messed the whole thing up!

And now, I'm working on analyzing the data and on my poster and paper, which are due in exactly one week. It'll be a lot of work, but very rewarding!