Today, Dr. Zanto and I met and finalized my research topic! After spending considerable time weighing whether to dive into the neural mechanisms of familiarity, or the neural mechanisms underlying Openness to Experience and attitude formation in music listening, I (with the guidance of Dr. Zanto) decided to dive into the latter, as it is a much more novel field. I'm so excited to get started!

Right now, my next steps are to work on my poster (project proposal) and my literature review.

I am continuing to work through data analysis--its a bit monotonous at some times but generally very exciting! I have found some significant correlations and trends, though I will be spending some more time doing further analysis before moving on to neural data.  

Additionally, I will soon be starting a review paper!

I have found a mentor! I am going to be working with Dr. Theodore Zanto at UCSF's Neuroscape lab. Dr. Zanto is the Director of the Neuroscience division at Neuroscape, and his work focuses on the intersection of attention, perception, and memory. I am incredibly excited to start this research process!