Second (and Third) Week at the Ped. Mood and Anxiety Disorders Lab

Imagine a whole closet of binders this size..

My second week at the Pediatric Mood and Anxiety Disorders Lab has largely been consumed by paperwork and training. Because I will begin working with subjects next week (hopefully!), I was required to complete training about the ethics of working with human subjects. This training was an online series of modules, formally recognized as CITI, Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative. Though this was long and detailed, it was a good experience to learn how the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and IRB (Institutional Review Board) operate and screen potential treatments. After finishing all the paperwork, I began recruiting participants for our study, which will use MRS scans to study the neurobiology of depression in adolescents. In doing so, I helped the lab coordinator review the submitted protocol and then post an advertisement on craigslist (which apparently does well). I continued to recruit participants by calling local high schools to see if they would be willing to let us send them flyers to post around the building to help us advertise our study. Beyond my recruitment work, I have been conducting literature searches on the role of the immune system in psychiatric disorders to broaden my understanding of the ongoing studies. I have gone back in the scanner and had one more MRS scan and anticipate several more in the coming weeks. The post-doctorate student showed me how to use the "mock" scanner, a machine that acts like a real scanner to help patients adjust to the strange noises and claustrophobic space. While I was in the mock scanner, I was exposed to the reward task that we will administer to subjects in our depression study. This study seeks to qualitatively examine depression and thereby will look specifically at the role of anhedonia, the inability to experience pleasure, and a core symptom of adolescent major depression (MDD).

I’ve met a lot of great potential mentors. I am enjoying the wide variety of positions in the lab. We have a chief of the program (who is an M.D.), a lab coordinator (who just finished her undergraduate studies), a post-doctorate student (who has her Ph.D. in neuroimaging), and then, of course, many research assistants and summer interns. Exposure to these various positions allows me to better understand the different roles of a research lab and the mentorship that occurs in each level. In my time at this lab, I have a lot of contact with our lab coordinator, who is incredibly patient and kind. She has helped me with data processing as well as given me context to the multiple studies that are currently happening. We have a strong relationship that I hope will continue to develop over my time in the lab.

Completing the reward task in the mock MRS scan