Not Just Monkeying Around

If anyone knows the true meaning of "monkey business," it's Sylwia Mrowka, a Penn State Altoona psychology (2006) and biology (2007) graduate. She studies the animals, but she'll tell you her job isn't just a bunch of monkeying around.

Mrowka is in the middle of a prestigious two-year position with the National Institute of Mental Health in Maryland. She works as a Post-Baccalaureate Intramural Research Training Fellow in the Laboratory of Neuropsychology, specifically in the Unit on Cognitive Neurophysiology and Imaging (UCNI). The overall mission of the UCNI is to study how visual perception arises from neural activity. At present, the unit is studying how visual objects are encoded in the brain, how neurons respond during illusions in which the stimulation of the retina remains constant but perception changes, and how visual information can bypass the primary visual cortex to reach higher brain areas and thereby guide behavior. To do this, the team trains macaque monkeys on visual tasks and correlates their behavior to brain activity on the microscopic level by recording the signals from single neurons, as well as on the macroscopic level by monitoring blood flow changes in different brain areas by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Mrowka's duties include behavioral training and care of research animals as well as technical development of research techniques and data analysis. She is also learning how to prepare and conduct physiological recordings and fMRI experiments with awake-behaving monkeys. Mrowka says by extending her knowledge on quantitative signal processing techniques, she aims to analyze neuronal and behavioral data acquired during the experimental procedures. 

—MARISSA CARNEY