Home Department: Biology and American Studies
Supported by: The Rose Hills Foundation
Mentor: Theo Palmer, Associate Professor of Neurosurgery
From West Covina, California, Vivian Ngo is a rising senior majoring in biology and American Studies. She has worked in the Palmer Lab for over a year. This summer, she is researching adult neurogenesis in mice whose working memories have been impaired by irradiation, the Rac1 mutation, or the cancer treatment TEMODAR. Using the Morris water maze, she hopes to show that neurogenesis during learning is important in destabilizing previously learned information. When Vivian is not in the lab, she enjoys going to theme parks, hiking nature trails, and anything that involves an adventure!
Poster presented at the Stanford Bio-X Interdisciplinary Initiatives Symposium on August 17, 2011:
Learning-Evoked Neurogenesis Provides Cognitive Flexibility
Vivian Ngo1, Ursula Haditsch2, Theo Palmer2
[Departments of Biology1 and Neurosurgery2, Stanford University]