Colette Gazonas-Week 6-Shadlen Lab, Columbia University

This week was my last week in Dr. Shadlen's lab. Because we had already finished all of the paradigms by the end of my fifth week, I dedicated the entire week to creating my poster. Yul asked me to create a new set of visuals and to create a rough draft of the entire poster on the template. Each day I sent him a revised copy and he would respond with feedback each night.

On Tuesday Yul, You-Nah, and I met to discuss how the poster was coming along. You-Nah read it over and gave me suggestions on how to make it better. I generated a diffusion-to-bound model and a more intricate illustration of the experimental procedure. I also fixed the problems I had encountered when graphing the logistic predictions.

Because my poster was near completion by the end of Tuesday night, Yul assigned me another matlab exercise. I was to simulate drift-diffusion using the software. To do this I repeated adding some random Gaussian random value until the absolute value of the accumulated evidence reached or exceeded beta. I utilized a for loop and scaled the mean in terms of delta t(time).

I ran this simulation for various coherences, both positive and negative. I simulated up to 3 seconds and ran 1000 trials per coherence level. Then, I plotted a histogram of the decision times.

On Friday I attended my last lab meeting. Afterwards my PI asked me to meet with him for a brief discussion about my experience in the lab. He asked me about what I felt I had learned, accomplished, and asked what he could do in the future to better prepare students in my position coming into the lab. He admitted that at first he was skeptical about whether or not I would be able to contribute anything to the lab, but said that he was pleasantly surprised and would consider taking on another high school student in the future. At the end of the meeting he offered to write me a letter of recommendation and told me that the lab should feel like a second home to me, so if I was ever in the area again I should stop by.

Overall, working in the lab this summer was a great experience. I learned much more than anticipated and am overly satisfied with the fashion in which I was both welcomed and mentored in the lab. I will definitely miss working with Yul, You-Nah, and Dr. Shadlen and hope that we will stay in touch in the future.