During my sophomore spring, I worked on conducting research on traumatic brain injury at the Wolf Lab in the Department of Neurosurgery at the Perelman School of Medicine. Traumatic Brain Injury, often abbreviated as TBI, results from mechanical insults to the head and can lead to disturbances in a patient's sleep cycle. In order to more thoroughly examine what these disturbances consist of, the Wolf Lab utilizes porcine models -- as these most closely resemble the human brain -- and mimics a TBI through the use of a Controlled Cortical Injury (CCI). 

For this project, I assisted in analyzing behavioral data of the pigs' sleep cycles to indicate any changes before and after the TBI. This study was done blinded to prevent any biases from impacting the data collected. Furthermore, the conclusions found from analyzing behavioral data was supported through the use of an electroencephalogram (EEG) as well, which directly records the signals in the brain during the sleep-wake cycles. Resulting from thorough analysis through both the behavioral and EEG lenses, it was concluded that the pigs with the CCI injury slept less than pigs without the injury at six weeks, and at four months following the TBI. Additionally, pigs with the CCI injury were seen to experience more short wave sleep (SWS) than non-injured pigs, also at six weeks, and at four months following the TBI.