Zoe Brown ’17, a senior majoring in neuroscience and psychology, is currently in the middle of writing her senior research thesis. An observation of Brown’s years at Brandeis, this thesis might determine that she is conducting the research for it from her second home, the Memory and Cognition Lab at Brandeis University.
Brown has been working in this lab since the second semester of her first year at Brandeis. She was looking for exposure to the research process designated for psychology and neuroscience and chose the Memory and Cognition Lab because it piqued her developing interest in memory, language processing and aging.
The lab works with speech recognition and memory processes concerning speech, specifically the changes in memory and speech associated with aging, and how all of these factors change over time. The human subjects that participate in projects within the lab listen to different words or sentences and then take comprehension tests based on what they hear.
The lab takes into account how a specific sentence is comprehended within the brain based on the different speech patterns with which the sentence is projected. The results of such research allow the researcher to better understand the roles of cognition in speech comprehension, as well as what strategies can be used to improve speech and comprehension with aging. The areas of science used in the Memory and Cognition Lab include cognitive psychology, neuroscience, computer engineering and other disciplines of the hard sciences.
Directing the lab is Principle Investigator Dr. Arthur Wingfield, whose expertise lies in hearing loss relating to age, as well as the cognitive functions associated with hearing loss.
Brown’s thesis also centers around speech prosody, which concerns the way a sentence or segment of speech longer than a phonetic segment is linguistically said, and its effects on speech comprehension. She studies “recall and the amount of effort it takes to process these sentences with good and reduced hearing ability.” She also looks specifically at the cognitive effort to determine the level of comprehension of different speech patterns.
To measure understanding of such sentences, Brown uses an Eye-Tracker, a piece of equipment which measures the width of the pupil at different dilations. She explains that “what’s been proposed in the literature is that increased pupil dilation is a measure of cognitive effort, so the larger the pupil size, the more effort.” She tests the effort level of listeners with different levels of hearing loss against different speech prosodies and patterns.
Other equipment commonly used in the lab includes an audiometer, which measures the hearing ability of a listener. In recent years, the Brandeis Memory and Cognition Lab has collaborated with the University of Pennsylvania to track data using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, a common imaging technology that looks at blood flow within the brain to determine where speech processing occurs neurologically. Sporadically, the Brandeis lab will also collaborate with other labs using an electroencephalogram, which tracks electrical activity within the brain.
Alongside Dr. Wingfield, Brown works with a lab coordinator, graduate students, master’s students, postgraduates and other undergraduates. Brown said these co-workers have had an overwhelming positive effect on her experiences in the lab. “I feel so fortunate to be able to have co-workers who are not only highly motivated, hard-working and resourceful, but who are also incredibly supportive and welcoming,” she explained.
In fact, she says her interactions with Brandeis undergraduates and others have been among the most rewarding parts of her research in the Memory and Cognition Lab. Studying hearing allows Brown to interact with both undergraduates and older adults when conducting research, all of whom are generally enthusiastic to participate in those studies. She stresses that participants in the study do not necessarily need to have inhibited hearing, and the lab welcomes all undergraduates who want to experience being in a research study.
Along with her interactions with human subjects and co-workers, Brown acknowledged the valuable skills she has gained from the lab, including reading literature on the subject, designing studies and running them, scoring and analyzing data and presenting research.
The opportunity to gain these skills requires an extensive time commitment, however. The lab requires research students to be in the lab for a minimum of eight hours per week. Brown explains that research requires effort in every part of the process, from reading the literature, to beginning a study, to defending the data in the research paper. “I have learned, and have a deeper appreciation for, the amount of work that goes into research,” she noted.
The skills gained in the lab extend to the classroom as well, according to Brown, who admits that she began to think more critically about the research presented in her classes.
Brown, whose father also worked in research, affirms that the time she spent in the lab has helped direct her future. After graduation, the senior plans to work for a few years before potentially pursuing more education.
When not working in the lab, Brown tutors middle schoolers and high schoolers through the Waltham Group. She also tutors through the Brandeis Undergraduate Group Study (BUGS), providing tutoring services to the students in many different psychology and neuroscience classes on campus. Her passion for tutoring has cultivated her interest in mental health in education, which she may pursue after graduation.
After Brown’s graduation, the lab will remain at Brandeis while faculty continue to conduct research concerning memory, speech prosody, language processing and other associated cognitive abilities.
