Attending to Attention-Bias Modification Therapy

This week, I finalized my topic of neuropsychology in my topic proposal, which was incredibly exciting and allowed me to explore the distinctions between the field and its adjacent fields of neuroscience and psychology. As I investigated career overviews of neuropsychology, I learned that it was the bridge between neuroscience and psychology and that it looked at psychological disabilities or cognitive impairments from a biological standpoint. Following my topic proposal, I conducted three informational interviews with researchers and doctors in the fields of neuroscience and neuropsychology. First, I interviewed Ziv Ben-Zion, a PhD student receiving his doctorate in neuroscience from Yale, about his research on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety disorders. I learned that studying anxiety is one of the most difficult emerging tasks to undergo in neuroscience and psychology research as it is nearly impossible to distinguish the contributions of internalized genetic factors and external environmental stimuli on behavior. Rather, it is a combination of both factors, and physicians must understand both components of a patient's diagnosis in order to holistically treat them. Next, I interviewed Dr. Christian LoBue, Ph.D and Dr. Brian Hitt, M.D, Ph.D, from UT Southwestern Medical Schools' Divisions of Neuropsychology and Neurology respectively. It was an interesting opportunity to be able to compare and contrast the two professionals' outlooks on the fields, as Dr. Lobue explained to me that neuropsychologists get references from the neurology department on specialized cases and then refer those cases to the psychiatry division, while Dr. Hitt explained that his work was primarily balancing research, clinical experience, and laboratory work. Having such insightful conversations with experts further developed my understanding of the field and has guided me into some avenues of research for my Original Work. I was definitely successful in securing interviews last week, as it was surprising that I got three interviews so quickly. This is a huge improvement from last year, as it took me nearly 30 phone calls to schedule an interview, but through experience I've learned that organization emails and LinkedIn messages are much more effective than phone calls. I was also successful in helping lead my ISM mentee group, and am receiving positive reception from them as they are continuing to ask me any questions they have and we are having good discussions about the assignments. Next week, I will contact more professionals using Linkedin and emails and finalize my original work by the end of the week. I am thinking of performing a study on my peers using attention-bias modification therapy, but I will look further into this clinical procedure and determine if it suitable in first, a virtual setting, and second, for the data pool that is available to me.