Jonides's Lab
Cognitive/Neuropsychology
Jonides's Lab
As an Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program student I had the great opportunity to work at the Jonides's Lab headed by John Jonides. I worked closely with and learned much from Ching Yung Sylvester a post doctoral student at the time.
The experience was very valuable and was my first exposure to research. I recruited, screened and scheduled subjects for fMRI neuropsychological testing. I helped with literature reviews, took part in lab meetings, and arranged results of experiments in data bases.
Part of our research was presented in a poster at the 2003 Meeting of Cognitive Neuroscience Society. The poster can be found here.
This experience also led me to my first Independent Research Study. In this study I worked on the data we had collected in the lab, and under the direction of Ching Yung Sylvester and John Jonides, wrote my own paper on cognitive inhibition.
As I conducted this research project, I discovered that Cognitive - Neuropsychology was not as interesting to me as research was! This experience exposed me to behavioral research and eventually the study of social behavior which became my preferred area of interest. I give credit to Professor Jonides and the rest of his staff for having lit the spark that is still growing with my passion for research.
Another interesting fact that I learned after I chose to work at the Jonides Lab is that my Uncle, Bruce Iden, also worked for Professor Jonides about 25 years earlier. My uncle took a year off after graduating with a BA in Psychology and worked in the same lab. Eventually he discovered that cognitive neuropsychology was not his passion (sounds familiar?...) and he went on to Law School. Today he is a lawyer living in Davie, FL.