Hunter Glanz is going to be a senior next year at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California but he’s spending his summer in Albuquerque at the UNM Department of Computer Science because he has an opportunity to work on a research problem with a mentor, computer science professor Terran Lane. The math and statistic major has taken on a challenging problem.
He will spend the next eleven weeks examining information run from a software program designed by a UNM graduate student to detect patterns of activity in functional magnetic resonance imaging (ƒMRI) brain scans from both healthy and schizophrenic patients. In particular he will look at the relationships among different areas of the brain.
The data comes from the Mind Research Network (MRN) at UNM. Glanz is part of a larger ongoing effort at the university to try to identify physical markers for the ways in which schizophrenia affects the brain.
Currently, schizophrenia is difficult to diagnose from physical symptoms. It must be diagnosed by psychiatrists who spend hours with the patient trying to understand what is happening in the mind. A breakthrough in understanding and interpreting the medical imaging would allow a quicker diagnosis and help physicians and psychiatrists move more quickly to treat the patient.
Glanz is on campus as part of a grant program called the Research Experience for Undergraduates in Integrated Machine Learning. His particular research is in the area of computational neuroscience. The program is a joint activity between the University of New Mexico and the University of Oklahoma and is funded by the National Science Foundation.