McNair Scholar 2018 - Sandra Taylor
Sandra Taylor is a rising senior at Carleton College expecting to obtain a B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Neuroscience in June of 2019. She has a multitude of research interests such as understanding mental disorders, their treatments, and their effects on interpersonal relationships and everyday life. She wishes to obtain a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology.
Quote from Sandra Taylor
I want to use my strengths to help others achieve a high quality of wellness in their life.
Research project
The Effect of Texture in Surround Suppression
Abstract: Surround suppression is when the firing rate of neurons in the primary visual cortex of the brain are modified because of surrounding stimulus outside of the neuron's receptive field. It is known that surround suppression can be demonstrated using sine-wave grating stimulus in a two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) task. Coen-Cagli, Kohn, & Schwartz, 2015 showed that flexible gain control, surround suppression, is present in everyday settings by using natural texture images. Our objective was to determine under what conditions of natural texture images is surround suppression produced and the degree to which it is produced.
Faculty mentor
Dr. Cheryl A. Olman is an associate professor for the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Olman received her B.S. in Physics from the Michigan State University in 1995. She then obtained her Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Minnesota in 2003. Her research interests focuses on understanding how fMRI signaling is produced and how low level of vision differs in healthy individuals and individuals with psychosis.