Emma Trammel knew what she wanted to study before she even knew what it was called.
When she was in high school, her psychology textbook had a brief chapter about brain structure. When she arrived at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, she realized that the subject that fascinated her was called and that she could earn a in it along with her .
“I found the brain as a whole to be fascinating,” Trammel said. “The psychology of people is really cool, but I’m more interested in what is going on in the brain: What anatomical differences there are, brain activity and how it’s affected by the outside world.”
Trammel received a 2015 Undergraduate Research Grant to study how people process language. The grant funds lab equipment and will pay for her to present her research at a professional conference.
In Trammel’s study, participants will be exposed to a prime, or sample word, that will be subconscious, meaning they won’t be aware they’ve seen it. Then, they will see words on a computer screen and identify whether the samples are actual words or made up. Trammel’s equipment then tracks their brain waves and how quickly participants respond when seeing certain words.
Reviewed 2015-04-10