Research Internship @ NUS
During my junior year, I participated in the Quest program at my school which required me to find and pursue a 4-month internship. For this, I was fortunate to be able to meet and secure a research internship with Prof. Camilo Libedinsky at his Neuroscience Lab at the National University of Singapore.
Distractor Suppression in Visual Working Memory
At the Libedinsky Lab, I investigated executive functions with a focus on distractor suppression in visual working memory (VWM) using single neural cell recordings in primates.Using Python, I analyzed a dataset that contained the neural recordings of 202 cells from the LPFC (lateral prefrontal cortex) of a rhesus macaque. The recordings were collected while the monkey conducted an oculomotor delayed response task, which involved visual distractors.
I used statistical and machine learning techniques such as logistic regression, decision trees, random forests and neural networks to determine that the firing rate of distractor suppression signals could predict the outcome of the rhesus macaque’s VWM task. These models indicated that the strength of the neural response to distractors could, even at the level of individual neurons, predict the behavioral outcome with an accuracy of 70%.
You can check out my research by clicking on the links above for my AP Research paper and an expanded version of the paper accepted in the Journal of Student Research. You can also watch a recording of my research thesis presentation and defense at school in the adjacent video.
Quest Excellence Award
The research that I did during my internship and subsequently as part of my Quest program won me the Research Excellence Award given to the student with the best research in my class.
