The Lab Life: Recent Episodes
Richard Song
Welcome to The Lab Life Podcast! This series presents a candid insight to the life of an undergraduate researcher. My name is Richard Song - I'm an undergraduate student at Vanderbilt University studying computer science, applied math, and neuroscience. On this podcast, I invite you along my weekly research journey and share lessons that I've learned in this lab.
In this episode, I recap my experience attending my first conference, the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting of 2022 in San Diego, California. I share some key takeaways that I got from the conference as well as three of my most favorite presentations!
In this episode, I talk about how I first discovered my love for neuroscience research, how I got started with research at Vanderbilt, my fMRI project in the Neuroimaging and Brain Dynamics Lab, my primary takeaways from completing my research project, and my future plans for research.
In this episode, I interview Tucker Apgar, a senior at Vanderbilt studying biochemistry as well as medicine, health, and society on the premed track. Tucker offers some valuable advice for undergraduate students interested in medicine (2:46), talks about his experience working in both a wet and a dry lab (7:08), shares some resources that helped him break into computational research despite having limited coding experience (14:06), and shines light onto how he got published as an undergraduate student (18:55).
In this episode, I sit down for an interview with one of the undergraduate students in my research lab (Neuroimaging and Brain Dynamics Lab), first-year Terra Lee. Stay tuned to hear about Terra’s research on neuroscience + music-mood regulation, her background as a woman interested in medicine, as well as her funny story about how she got started with research!
This is the season finale! In part 1, we talk about the 7 traits of highly successful undergraduate researchers. In part 2 (7:48), I present my full results from my research at Boys Town, and I summarize my primary takeaways from the program.
As an undergraduate student, it is important to realize that no matter how experienced or how well researched you are, there will always be plenty of senior researchers who you can seek mentorship from. In part 1, I talk about the importance of research mentors as well as how to establish a strong relationship with your research mentors. In part 2 (12:00), I talk about some of the functional connectivity analysis that I performed this week, which involved me analyzing how the connection between different brain areas was impacted from transcranial direct current stimulation.
So you’ve taken everything that you’ve learned from this podcast and you’re finally ready to present your interesting findings! Great work, this is a huge milestone. Now the question becomes, how can you best present your research project in an effective and efficient way? In part 1, we talk about the process behind creating posters and writing papers. In part 2 (16:25), I share a very interesting interpretation of my results, and highlight specific brain regions that I personally found to be vital to working memory that are impacted by parietal lobe transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). So without further ado, let’s discuss!
A great opportunity to gain full-time research experience without the need to worry about classwork is over the summer. In part 1, we’re going to talk about finding summer research positions as an undergraduate, and I share the cover letter that got me accepted into a very competitive summer research program. In part 2 (14:21), I talk about some of my major breakthrough results for this week at Boys Town, including how I got to them and how I plan on interpreting these results. So without further ado, let’s discuss!
As an undergraduate student, you will have the opportunity to take many different classes, some of which will be very useful to your research endeavors. In part 1, I talk about some of the most useful classes that I have taken that have helped me with my research, what what specifically from those courses I have found most useful. In part 2 (10:35), I finally share some of the results that I have found for this week regarding tDCS and verbal working memory, and I talk about future steps for my data analysis. So without further ado, let’s discuss!
In the last episode, we mentioned that one of the best ways to overcome research hurdles is to read as many papers as possible, but we didn’t go into too much depth into how to actually do this effectively. In part 1, we will talk about strategies that you can use to get the most out of the paper-reading process so that you can find inspiration for your research. In part 2 (16:43), we’ll continue on with my weekly updates at Boys Town this week, and I explain the neuroimaging techniques I used to determine the brain areas associated with significant verbal working memory activity in my dataset.
Last episode, I heavily alluded to the idea that research, especially at the undergraduate level, takes a lot of time and you’ll often find yourself facing tough research questions where the answer is not at all obvious. In part 1, we will talk about how to overcome these difficult moments during your research. In part 2 (19:12), I’ll share my weekly updates on my research at Boys Town, including some of my preliminary findings correlating working memory to tDCS, as well as the MRI/MEG research study that I participated in this week!
Undergraduates, unlike professors, postdocs, and phd candidates, are not professional researchers. We’re students first and foremost, which means that our top priorities still lie in the classroom. So with that in mind, in part 1, we’re going to discuss how to balance classes with research. In part 2 (12:06), I talk about the beginnings of my project involving working memory and transcrandial direct current stimulation, including the experimental design and preprocessing.
Last episode, we talked about how to get a position as an undergraduate research assistant in a research lab. But once you get that role, how should you begin? In part 1 of this episode, we talk about coming up with a research project that best fits your interests, how to actually get started with your project, and defining expectations for your project with your mentor. In part 2 (starting at 14:20), I talk about my weekly research updates at Boys Town, including the specific research project that I will be working on this summer involving working memory and transcranial direct current stimulation, or TDCS.
Many undergraduate students desire to pursue undergraduate research in order to meet premedical requirements, gain experience for graduate school, or add a strong experience to their resume. However, finding a research lab as an undergraduate can be a lot harder than it seems. In part 1, we go over ways that undergraduate students can maximize their chance at securing a research position through cold emailing, networking, and approaching professors after class. In part 2, we talk about my new research position at the Boys Town National Research Hospital Institute for Human Neuroscience, and I briefly cover the powerful tool that I will be working with throughout the summer, magnetoencephalography (MEG).