Adrianna M
- Research Program Mentor

PhD at Case Western Reserve University

Expertise

Behavioral neuroscience, neuropsychological impairments, cell biology, behavioral psychology, neuropharmacology, philosophy, cognitive psychology

Bio

My name is Adrianna, I was born and raised in Florida where I attended Florida State University and received my Bachelor's of Science degree in Psychology with a minor focus in Biological Science. When I was in high school, I became extremely interested in the mind and how our personalities and behaviors come about as a result of inner urges and environmental stimuli. I combined my areas of focus in college and began doing psychological and neuroscientific research as an undergraduate volunteer. My first exposure to two laboratory settings during university allowed me to observe and participate in human and rodent research and led me to pursue a career in academic biomedical research. In August 2023, I completed my PhD in Neuroscience at Case Western Reserve University after defending my thesis on therapeutic recovery of paralysis in the arm after an injury to the spinal cord. In addition to my passions involving the mind and the brain, I spend a great portion of my time reading (especially audiobooks) whenever I can. My truest passion is for learning and I adore books, as well as podcasts, that center around actionable lessons from authors and motivational speakers such as Zig Ziglar, Alan Watts, Les Brown, Dr. Joe Dispenza, Norman Vincent Peale, Napoleon Hill and Florence Scovel Shinn. Therefore, I believe that learning through trial and error is highly beneficial, especially when supplemented with an expert mentor in the field of interest.

Project ideas

Project ideas are meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.

The effects of acquired vocabulary and internal dialogue on self-perception in goal-setting and motivation.

In the fields of philosophy and psychology, the use of spoken communication to convey abstract thoughts contains both what is being verbalized and what is not. Additionally, the use of words and their meaning falls on a spectrum of intentional selection (fully attentive or not), and the emotional state of the individual. However, while the range of human expression lies on a spectrum, oral communication is inherently binary when measured by what is said verses what is not said. Our thought and beliefs dictate the way in which we use the words we acquire through various means of exposure (for example, visual or auditory). Interestingly, our thoughts can further emotionally 'charge' how we choose to communicate both with ourselves and with other people. Some possible research questions could include: Are the words acquired by an individual over their lifetime a determinant of internal self-talk directly influencing external communication? Is a feedback loop formed as the external world responds to what is communicated orally by the originating thinking individual? This project may be investigated using various means of data gathering methods, such as self-report surveys, interviews, and prompted short essay responses, to actionably illustrate the process of forming and qualitatively measuring a research hypothesis.

Teaching experience

I have mentored students in person and virtually on neuroscientific research techniques such as measuring animal behavior, forming hypotheses, planning experiments, gathering data, generating results and figures/graphs. I have also worked with students in preparation for conferences where they present their work in poster form to an audience. I have strengths in scientific communication (written and spoken) and building foundational knowledge to build an intriguing question for investigating.