On the Blog

Hello!!! I have started this blog to document my semester as a volunteer at the Substance Use Research Center in the NYSPI/Columbia University Medical Center. A bit about my background before I get into the my interests and research – I am a second-year undergraduate at Columbia University, where I hope to get a degree in Neuroscience and Behavior. I am originally from the Bronx, where I was born and raised. Outside of psychology and school, I have a deep passion for music, especially some of the experimental stuff that lies on the fringes of what would even be considered music. As an outlet for my obsession, I program music for WKCR-FM (mostly free jazz/free improvisation, but I also broadcast classical, latin, and regular jazz occasionally), where I am the head of the New Music Department.

About my research: I am stationed at the Marijuana Laboratory, which is part of the Substance Use Research Center in the New York State Psychiatric Institute-Columbia University Medical Center. I usually help out in the Res Lab, which is the part of the laboratory that houses inpatient research volunteers (though our experiments also have an outpatient component). The head researcher in the Res Lab is Dr. Margaret Haney. She is currently investigating the effect of various nicotine relapse medications alone and in combination with nabilone, a synthetic cannabinoid, on marijuana relapse. The volunteers of our study are between 23 and 50 years old and very heavy marijuana and cigarette smokers. The study consists of a 16-day outpatient and 16-day inpatient research session. Throughout this month-long study, we vary the amount of marijuana and cigarettes the subjects are allowed to smoke. To measure the effect of the medications with marijuana and cigarette relapse, we closely monitor their health, mood, and cognitive ability throughout the various stages of the study

That’s a very brief and vague overview of the sort of stuff that we are doing at the lab. The details will become more clear over the semester as I post about the happenings in our research. In the meantime, enjoy this wonderful picture of one of the spaces in our lab!