New Beginnings by Jackson Barlow

Hello everyone and welcome back! As you know my name is Jackson Barlow and I just recently finished my first five weeks of my TRIP adventure. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time so far at TRIP, although sometimes it is hard to get out of bed bright and early in the morning. I’ve made many friends with my classmates and they are one of the many reasons that make this experience so enjoyable. During these past weeks I got to test melatonin’s effect on head trauma through a negative geotaxis assay. This process was very tedious and I learned how precise you had to be with data analysis. I also learned that my hands aren’t very steady as I often would drop the vial or my phone would fall over when I was snapping a picture of the flies at a fixed position. 

Following my testing and data analysis, I learned that melatonin has little effect on fly motility when it is paired with head trauma. In the positive realm, my data supported the idea that melatonin has a positive effect on control flies.

I will be testing...how caffeine affects cognitive function and memory

I could not be more excited about the upcoming weeks in which I will be conducting my independent research project. Originally, I had no clue what I wanted to study. Ideas flowed through my head such as continuing research into head trauma or branching off into a new realm of sleep deprivation, but after consideration from Dr. Leystra, Dr. Purdy, and my peers, I branched off in a completely different direction -- cognitive function. My research question that I will be testing in the upcoming weeks is how caffeine affects cognitive function and memory. I will be testing the effects of caffeine on the flies by creating four vials and running a larval memory assay. Three of the vials will contain caffeine and one will be a control. The three vials with caffeine will have different levels of caffeine exposure. One vial will contain a dilute solution of the recommended daily consumption of caffeine (400 mg), the second being double the recommended daily consumption of caffeine, and the final vial will be triple the recommended daily consumption of caffeine.

By conducting this experiment, I hope to see if the daily consumption of caffeine that most teenagershave has an effect on their daily lives, specifically their memory. I hypothesize that the caffeine will have a negative effect on developing larval brains, leading to a decrease in memory and knowledge of their surroundings in the assay. ’ll be sure to keep you all posted! Thanks for reading!