Hi everyone! My name is Ameena Ashraf and I am a junior majoring
in psychology with a minor in neuroscience. Psychology and neuroscience are so
intriguing to me and I knew I had to conduct my own research to kick start my
future. I have always had an appreciation for the performing arts, so when I
saw there was a project that meshed science with dance, I had to jump on it.
The project my group and I decided to do was to see how
different authority figures affect dance performance by looking at the height
displacement of a grand jeté (jump), length of a circular loop, and angular
velocity of a soutenu (quick spin). Previously, I did some research on anxiety
and wanted to quantitate it on a dancer, so we measured heart rate and provided
a self-reporting anxiety survey called the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory
(STAI). On a weekly basis, our team was going through articles to find more
information on authority figures and performance. A week of our time was
devoted to running participants through a motion capture system called Motive. The
rest of the weeks consisted of post-processing, writing code in MATLAB, and analyzing
data.
The collaboration between psychology, bioengineering, and dance
has been rewarding. There is a beneficial and fulfilling sense of
accomplishment one gets in an interdisciplinary project. I have learned more
about collaboration, bioengineering, dance, and research this summer than I
have anywhere else.
