Week 1 - Robert Hawkins

Research - My project for this summer is going to focus on using a large national database that contains blood/plasma biomarker data, cognitive scores, and image data on ~6000 subjects that are either healthy, have mild cognitive impairment, or have Alzheimer's disease. Specifically, I will be looking for associations between neutrophil activation and reductions in cerebral blood flow, which is what my (Schaffer-Nishimura) lab in Ithaca is also investigating. I like this project because in the Schaffer-Nishimura Lab we only work with mice, and so it nice to now be able translate that work and to analyze some of the same measurements in human subjects. I am also learning how to use the statistical program 'R' for this project, which I think is a good skill to develop. Much of my week has been spent looking at this Alzheimer database and trying to find/extract the data that I need. I've already run into a few problems with this dataset in that there are not many patients who have both blood biomarker and cerebral blood flow data available, so I am currently looking into what other measurements might also be interesting to look at.

Clinical - I am shadowing broadly with the Brain Health Imaging Institute, which is a large research group composed of multiple radiologists, neurologists, with the goal to investigate age-related human brain diseases as well as to develop novel biomarkers, radiotracers, and treatments. So far I have worked mostly with Dr. Tracy Butler, who assigned me my research project, and Dr. Silky Pahlajani. This week I was able to observe Dr. Pahlajani perform a cognitive assessment on an elderly subject who will be inducted into a imaging study as a 'healthy control'. Afterwards, Dr. Pahlajani guided me and another intern through the purpose of some of the questions, what responses she was looking for, and what responses would indicate that a person is suffering from some type of dementia or cognitive impairment. She described that a person with dementia would likely not be able to remember a word they had been given even when prompted with a clue, while a person who had suffered a stroke or had some other cognitive impairment would likely remember the word after being prompted. This is because people with dementia often have trouble with the 'encoding' portion of memory, meaning the word they are given to remember never gets put into a memory. Next week I hope to observe multiple MRI/CT/PET scans that are performed by the institute. 

Life - I took the Amtrak up from Maryland and when I got off at Penn Station in Midtown I was at first very overwhelmed by all the people/sights/sounds. However, the area where the hospital and our dorms are located is a much quieter/calmer area that is much less overwhelming. We also just a short walk from Central Park, a subway station, a Target, and many food places so it is overall a great location!

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