Internships with the Center for Understanding Biology using Imaging Technology

Stony Brook        ·       Internship

Scientific Internships:

Because we have a lot of people interested in working in the lab, our interns must be able to work independently, with minimal guidance. To see if this experience may be right for you, consider your interest in the project below:

Development of a Scientific Publication

Our only available internships currently involve the development of a scientific publication. Depending on the amount of time you contribute, you could be first author, or a co-author on the publication. These positions require:

• strong writing skills
• ability to perform literature searches using pubmed
• organizational skills
• independence: Almost all the work will be performed outside of the lab, with your own computer. We will correspond mostly by email. (If you are interested in a Simons Fellowship, please see the FAQs below.)
• patience! On average, it requires over two years to assemble a scientific publication (see the timelines for current papers being written here).

We do not require a background in brain imaging or scientific writing. You just need to be willing to perform research independently, and search (e.g. google, pubmed, text books) for answers as needed.

Interested? If so, the first step is to choose your topic…

We are currently completing a brain imaging study sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). In our current study, we are acquiring this imaging in people who are suffering from major depressive disorder and non-depressed participants. The study timeline is:

• participants are screened to see if they meet inclusion/exclusion (e.g., they must be suffering from a certain level of depression to be in the depressed group, and they must have never suffered from depression to be in the control group).
• Enrolled participants then answer a series of questions about themselves (see Participant Questionnaires below).
• The participants then wear actigraphy monitors (like Fitbit) to monitor their activity and sleep. This helps us understand their baseline circadian rhythms.
• The participants then come into the lab for a three night stay. On the first night, the participants sleep normally. We collect melatonin samples throughout the night to assess their circadian rhythm. On the second night, we keep the participants awake for 36 hours. Following this, the participants are once again able to sleep normally. We collect melatonin samples during the last night to determine if the 36 hours of wakefulness shifted their circadian rhythm.
• After the lab stay, the participants then wear actigraphy monitors (like Fitbit) for multiple days to monitor longer term changes in their circadian rhythm.

Brain Imaging

The study involves brain imaging with Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).

These imaging modalities allow us to gain a lot of information about the brain, including:

• PET: We can assess the density of one type of glutamate receptor (the metabotropic glutamate receptor subtype 5, mGluR5) using PET. See Figure 1 of this paper to visualize these receptors. We acquire these images three times over the course of one night to understand the circadian rhythm of these receptors.
• structural MRI: Tells you the size and shape of every brain region. See an example here. (Different colors represent different brain regions.) We have automated techniques (e.g., Freesurfer) to extract volume/thickness of each region.

Sleep Deprivation

Sleep deprivation can act as an antidepressant in some people and part of this study aims to understand why that is. One possibility is that people with depression have disturbed circadian rhythms (e.g., poor sleep, insomnia) and sleep deprivation “resets” these rhythms. Similarly, we want to understand who is most likely to benefit from sleep deprivation. This is why we acquire information about participants’ circadian rhythms (from actigraphy and melatonin) prior to the sleep deprivation. We also acquire brain imaging to understand if the mGluR5 receptor controls this circadian rhythm.

Participant Questionnaires

Our participants complete the following surveys prior to sleep deprivation:

• Adult Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire
• Childhood Trauma Questionnaire
• Credibility And Expectancy Questionnaire
• Edinburgh Handedness Inventory
• Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (taken before, during and after sleep deprivation)
• Highly Sensitive Person Scale
• Hurt Feelings Questionnaire
• Inventory Of Depression And Anxiety
• Multidimensional Scale Of Perceived Social Support
• Quick Inventory Of Depressive Symptoms
• Revised Social Anhedonia Scale
• Sleep Questionnaire
• Social Responsiveness Scale

Putting it all together…

What we are looking for is motivated interns to form a hypothesis based on the above data. How does that work?

Step 1:

Basically, you need to do a little digging into any of the topics that may interest you from anything mentioned above. Based on that, you may come up with some questions that you are interested in examining. Note that there are no requirements for what the hypotheses might be. They may not include brain imaging at all, such as:

• Do people with higher levels of depression sleep less (as measured by actigraphy)? Do they move less?
• Does the length of time that someone has been depressed affect their outlook on the success of treatment?

Including brain imaging, you could ask something like:

• Does the circadian rhythm of mGluR5 match the circadian rhythm measured by actigraphy?
• Do people with higher levels of mGluR5 experience greater depression?

Wondering what manuscripts are already being worked on? The following topics are currently being examined:

• Shahbegh Kalra (Stony Brook University): Relationship between the circadian rhythm of melatonin and the circadian rhythm of activity (measured by actigraphy)
• Devika Patel (Stony Brook University): Relationship between the circadian rhythm of melatonin and the circadian rhythm of mGluR5 (measured by PET)

An important note regarding plagiarism: Many of you will be writing a scientific paper for the first time. It is a learning process! One critical piece of information: it is never ok to copy sentences or parts of sentences from other papers (even when you include the citation). This is called plagiarism and it can end your scientific career and get you into a lot of trouble. If you have any questions about this, feel free to ask. And, please make sure all the wording in your paper is your own.

Step 2:

Once you have the hypothesis (or multiple hypotheses) you’re interested in, it’s time to look through the literature to see if this question has been answered before. The best way to do this is to use key words in pubmed. If the question has been addressed before, that’s good! It means you came up with a really interesting question that someone worked to answer! Perhaps you can modify your hypothesis a bit to find a question that’s still open. Or perhaps the authors did not address exactly what you were interested in. You should carefully document all of the literature you read, as this will help form the introduction of your paper. Based on this literature, you should update your hypothesis to address (1) a question that has not yet been answered and (2) one that is important for the field.

Step 3:

Following your literature search, clearly write your updated hypothesis. Combine your background literature search, plan for analysis and hypotheses into a single document.

Note that you are welcome to send me an email prior to your official application with a very short (3-4 sentences) summary of what you are planning to study and how it is different from previously published studies. While this does not constitute an official application, I can provide some feedback at this point.

Step 4:

Please email Dr. DeLorenzo the following:

• your resume/CV
• the 1-2 page write up of your hypothesis based on the above (see sample in step 3)
• the time commitment you will be able to provide (how many hours per week for how long)

Based on your schedule, your research interest and the quality of your proposal, we will let you know if you are selected for an internship with CUBIT.

Please click here to learn more.