Why do you like neuroscience? Sometimes I find this question to be the most frustrating and difficult to answer. World-changing, groundbreaking, and clinically invaluable researches are not what actually drive my interest in neuroscience; I’m just purely fascinated by our neural workings of our brain, in its plastic ability to adjust to new environments, and its firings of neurons that make us feel and act the way that makes each of us unique.
I started working in Professor Christina Williams’ (PI) research lab and the general idea of my project is investigating the effects of voluntary running on the mice’s brain, focusing on spatial memory and learning (for more information, click here). This is my very first hands-on experience in a lab setting, and I’m really excited and eager to learn more about the brain outside of class and textbooks. I don’t expect to get perfects results, and as many have forewarned us, it might not work out the way I want. But after working in the lab for the next 7 weeks, I hope to find myself in a place where I have true passion, delving into the study of the brain with the help of great fellow researchers in my lab, and exploring the lab setting which will hopefully lead to finding my pathway.
This week, I’ve been introduced to two undergraduate students and my secondary mentor, and they have helped/showed me a few techniques, including stereology, counting newly born cells in the mice’s subventricular zone (SVZ) with the microscope attached to the computer, and brain “punching,” slicing the brain (that was kept frozen at -80°C!) in a machine (-20°C) and punching out the part of the brain that we would like to examine.
There was a lab meeting on Thursday, and aside from going over our to-do-list, I was able to get answers to my questions from the papers that Dr. Williams gave me before the start of the program, and it was great – I’m getting a clearer picture of the project that I’ll be a part of! I also had to go through a bit of online training before working in the animal facility, get a new Duke card with a special “HID chip” inside which will grant access to the facility, and attend the floor orientation to get introduced to the animal facility. There were a lot of things to be done this week before jumping into the actual research project, and will probably continue throughout next week – working in a lab isn’t as simple! But I’m really excited to be a part of my lab and to be learning more about something that I love, and I’m looking forward to the experiences I’ll have in the next couple months.
