Lokita Rajan is a senior majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. She was awarded a Fall 2017 Conference Grant which she used to attend the 2017 Society for Neuroscience Conference.
I attended the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) annual meeting in Washington DC. My first time attending a neuroscience conference happened to be the largest in the world. About 30,000 attendees came from all around the globe, specializing in research across a spectrum from a cellular level all the way to cognitive systems. The sheer size of the conference was impressive. There were a thousand poster presentations happening at a given time. I felt like part of this huge community of scientists brought together by studying the brain.
The poster I presented at SfN was partially funded by a URP independent research grant. I studied auditory imagery compared to other modalities of sensory imagery. Visual imagery is subdivided into two types. Object imagery involves pictorial images integrating surface (color, texture, etc.) and structural (shape) properties. Spatial imagery involves schematic images that focus on structural properties at the expense of surface properties, and on spatial transformations. These imagery dimensions also exist in haptic (touch) imagery. My research examines whether similar dimensions exist in auditory imagery. I also looked at the correlations between auditory imagery preference and visual imagery preference.
People from many different disciplines within neuroscience stopped by my poster to learn more about my research. Several people who studied multisensory perception came to see my presentation and were most interested in the analogs between sight, touch, and hearing. Others specifically studied the auditory system and wanted to know more about the parts of the brain that were engaged during the auditory task that participants completed. One person who studied the effects of sensory perception on meditation also came by to learn more about sensory imagery in the context of her work. Some scientists who worked in cellular neurobiology and other areas outside of cognitive science came to my poster just because they were drawn to the catchy title, “Listening to the Mind’s iPod.” I was originally concerned that presenting for four hours would be tiring, but it remained exciting and engaging, because each person who came to my poster had a different perspective and sometimes even new ideas for future directions to contribute.
When I was not presenting, I had the opportunity to attend lectures given by extremely prominent neuroscientists. One was about artificial intelligence (AI), given by Dr. Demis Hassabis. He spoke about neuroscience-inspired reinforcement learning in AI systems, using a concept I had learned about in my neuroscience classes at Emory, called the dopamine reward prediction error hypothesis. This allowed him to create an AI system that could learn from its mistakes to beat a master player at an Asian game called Go, which has far too many possible board positions for traditional calculation-based AI systems to work with. He talked about the future direction of neuroscience-inspired AI and how AI systems could also inform the way we study the brain.
I attended another lecture given by Dr. Pasko Rakic, whose work I have studied in many of my neuroscience classes. He is best known for the radial unit hypothesis, which is a conceptual theory of cerebral cortex development. Notably, Dr. Rakic has attended all 47 annual meetings of SfN. His lecture showcased his work studying the cerebral cortex over the years as the field of neuroscience developed and changed. This “History of Neuroscience” lecture was filled with funny historical quips like “Don’t ask what new neurons can do for you, ask what you can do for your old neurons,” and “One small step for cell…one giant leap for mankind.”
From presenting my own research to seeing neuroscience inform cutting edge technology to learning about the scientific process behind the concepts I see in class, attending SfN was an incredible experience. I grew as a student, researcher, and academic, and I am very thankful to URP for making this trip possible for me.
Visit the Undergraduate Research Programs website to learn more about applying for Conference Grants.
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