Marcella Soewignjo, COL ’25, Bayside, NY
With an average of 86 billion neurons forming intricate networks, it can be agreed upon that the human brain holds a great deal of cognitive capacity. However, despite the many years of research that has been done on the human brain to better understand our unique thoughts, actions, and decision-making capabilities, much still remains a mystery. The Fuccillo Laboratory under the Perelman School of Medicine, is taking a stab at this mystery. There, with the assistance of Career
Services Summer Funding, I had the opportunity this summer to work as a research assistant. Under the guidance of my mentor, NGG student Luigim Vargas, I was able to learn more about the role that the striatum, an area of the brain located within the basal ganglia, plays in reward-processing and decision making behavior.
Being able to have the opportunity to participate in this lab allowed me to realize that while many of the ideas being investigated in my mentor’s research had been familiar from my neuroscience courses, I had only scratched the surface. I learned that there is far more to understand about the intricacies of the basal ganglia loop. The project had a focus on two areas of the striatum, namely, the anterior dorsal medial region and the posterior dorsal medial region. While it is understood from previous research that the striatum as a whole plays an active role in decision-making behavior, the distinction between the function of these two particular regions within the striatum in reward-based decision-making behavior is less understood.
During my time at the Fuccillo Lab, I had the opportunity to assist in running behavioral experiments, observe surgeries, dip my toes in reading neuroscience research papers, and learn some histology. Beyond the hands-on research experience I was able to gather, I found that reading research papers allowed me to make connections to the ongoing experiments in the lab which made the work all the more fascinating. While reading such long texts loaded with information had been daunting at rst, analyzing scientic literature has now become more manageable. Without the summer funding, this experience would not have been possible. My time at the Fuccillo Laboratory has solidied my interest in neuroscience research and I hope to continue in the next few years of my undergraduate career.
This is part of a series of posts by recipients of the 2023 Career Services Summer Funding Grant. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they spent their summer. You can read the entire series here
