I was an undergraduate research assistant at the USC Brain and Creativity Institute (BCI) from 2019 to 2022.

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Under the lab's Templeton Baylor Project and through the guidance of my post-doctoral mentor, I've participated in an incredible research initiative into the neural and psychosocial foundation of adolescents' goal-making processes. 

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During psychological development, adolescents' abilities to formulate abstract goals are thought to be supported by high quality, meaningful social relationships with trusted, more experienced adults. Several neural systems likely contribute to adolescents' abilities to form and process abstract life goals. Neuroimaging studies have shown that the Basal Ganglia Network processes value-driven behavior, while the Default Mode Network (DMN) supports abstract understandings of one's own and others' perspectives, values, and beliefs. Further, connectivity between these regions increases with development.
 

Given the importance of reflecting on personal stories in the context of supportive relationships with older, wiser adults, the BCI collaborates with Sages and Seekers, an arts organization that teaches intergenerational storytelling to senior citizens and high school teens. Since 2019, I've assisted the BCI in testing whether our intergenerational storytelling intervention impacts adolescent participants' self-understanding and abstract goals. This intergenerational storytelling intervention program consisted of an eight-week program, where a teen was paired with a senior citizen to share meaningful conversations about life stories and self-reflections. 

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Each week, I joined my post-doctoral mentor in traveling to a local high school, where we helped oversee the Sages and Seekers sessions and collected post-session video reflections from each teen. I collected these systematic opportunities for reflection for a couple months, before the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools.

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Since the pandemic began, I've been working virtually at BCI to code for indicators of abstract goal-making in these video reflections. I've transcribed these video reflections and analyzed their 'codes' using NVivo. From these analyses, my lab has found trends for improvements in teens' wellbeing, increased growth mindset, increased purpose in life, increased formation of abstract life-goals, and increased motivation to participate in action for social change. 

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This project integrates findings from social-affective neuroscience research on goal processing with promising results from an established educations storytelling program. The BCI's research offers insights into the neurobiology of fostering social goals and the value of offering adolescents with opportunities for reflecting on their communities in relation to their future goals, in order to promote thoughtful citizenship. Moreso, our work demonstrates the effectiveness of an arts-based educational program in promoting healthy development in adolescents. This speaks volumes when it comes to promoting equal access to the arts, as systematically providing adolescents with spaces for personal reflection during class-time promotes the social-emotional learning which is so vital in building healthy classroom climates.

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