Neural and Behavioral Sciences Senior Seminar

Hi Internet! My name is Dan Shanin and I am a senior at Haverford College majoring in psychology with an NBS concentration.  I will be attending medical school next year and hope to pursue either Trauma Surgery or Interventional  Radiology.  This year I am doing a thesis, along with David Fischer and Jeremy Posner, investigating the interaction between testosterone levels, stress hormones (using social dominance hierarchies) and hippocampal neurogenesis in mice.  My interest in neuroscience began as a interest in general human biology and progressed towards the brain as it is truly the final frontier in our efforts to understand what makes us who and what we are.

My 3 topics of interest are:

1.  Glial cells, specifically neuronal-astrocyte interactions and astrocyte-astrocyte interactions.  While the former category of interactions are better studied and form the basis for some of the most common investigatory tools such as fMRI imaging there is much more to the relationship than is currently understood.  The latter category are even more interesting because they represent an entirely novel system of neural information exchange that may eventually come to challenge the doctrine that the neuron is the fundamental subunit of all neural activity.  

2.  Neurogenesis; just finding areas in the brain with constant neuronal development throughout a person's lifetime was groundbreaking, what interests me however is the "why" behind it.  I am interested in what neural processes require these new cells and how this can improve our understanding of the brain as a whole.

3.  Sorry to say the same thing as everybody else but...the connection between mental illness psychology and brain physiology.  Psychiatry remains decades behind the rest of medicine, some drugs work for some patients...some for others and nobody knows why.  I feel that the ultimate goal of neuroscience is to increase our understanding of the brain and mind to the point where a psychiatrist can manipulate the brain with the same confidence of an internist manipulating the body.      

Hi, I'm a premed biology major at BMC.  I'm interested in going into neurology or possibly neurosurgery.  I'm particularly interested in neurodegenerative diseases, but I'm also intrigued by intelligence.  I think conditions like autism where intelligence may be greatly enhanced in one area and nearly absent in another are fascinating.  My thesis is on how the human brain evolved language and how the co-evolution of the social structure was involved.  I've been looking into how newer languages, such as sign languages and creoles, have emerged and the role the community played.  My three interests/questions in neuroscience are:

1. What exactly is intelligence?  The ways we choose to define intelligence and how we differentiate ourselves from other species based on intelligence are obviously important to us as humans.  We are interested in classifying and ranking intelligence with methods like IQ tests, and yet we often admit that it's not something that can be truly quantified.  The way we view intelligence has a serious effect on the way we view people of unusual or abnormal intelligence.

2. What causes neurodegeneration beyond the normal aging process, and how can it be prevented or reversed?  The best we can do at this point is slow the progress of some of these diseases and manage the symptoms, but cures are beyond the means of current research.

3. As David F. already said, I think it's interesting to consider the merging of biology and psychology, such as finding the links between thoughts/behaviors and neurochemistry.

Hello,

My name is Jeremy Posner and I'm a psychology major at Haverford College.  I'm working with David and with Dan Shanin on a thesis designed  to investigate the significance of both social status and gonadal hormones upon neurogenesis rates in mice.  My interest in neurobiology stems from a focus upon the nature of mental illness and its treatment.  I was initially interested in the mechanisms of drug treatment and understanding of the underlying causes of neurological diseases and over time I've broadened my focus to include the general biology of the nervous system.  So I suppose that I'll be able to contribute specifically through a clinical and practical perspective.  Three topics within the field that are particularly interesting to me are: 

1. Drug treatments for neurological diseases and specifically to repair neural damage or death.  

2. A better understanding of the neural features of different mental disorders, understanding both common features and variation within different diagnoses (and whether diagnoses based upon symptom groupings are currently accurate).

3. Neuroplasticity and neuroadaptation.  The growth of new neurons as it relates to things like learning and the degree to which the brain is able to adapt to aging and damage without loosing function or even adapting in the face of the loss of function.  

Hey everyone, I'm Megan. I'm a Psychology major at Bryn Mawr with an NBS concentration. I'm writing my thesis on the anxiolytic effects of the lateral septum in rat brains. It has been a very fun experience. It is certainly something unique that I wouldn't be able to do anywhere else. I'm also minoring in Spanish and I enjoy learning languages. I'm always impressed by the brain's plasticity and I am interested in the chemical processes that underlie human behavior.

Three topics related to the field of neurobiology that I find interesting are as follows:

1. I would like to see if the field of neurobiology could find a way to reverse, or at least halt, physical damage to the brain as a result of injury or illness. Could there be a pacemaker equivalent for parts of the brain?

2. In the case of Phineas Gage, the man who had a tamping rod shoot through his skull and lodge in his brain, scientists have observed that personality can change as a result of physical destruction of parts of the brain. What about the physical rearrangement of certain areas of the brain causes changes in mood and personality?

3. Is neurobiology applicable to all cultures? How do cultural differences shape how people view the brain and mental illness?

My name is David Fischer, and I'm a psychology major at Haverford. I'm primarily interested in behavioral neuroscience, in terms of understanding the biological basis of our behavioral patterns, which I see as some of the most fundamental aspects of being an organism. My perspective is probably most unique in that it is in large part philosophical. My interest in neuroscience stemmed from an initial interest in the philosophy of mind. Although I've come to dedicate most of my focus to teasing apart the mechanisms for behavior, I haven't lost an interest for the broader implications of reducing complex psychological processes to neural circuitry. I've also gained a unique perspective from my lab work, where I've studied the neural effects of environmental changes, neurogenesis, the effects of social behavior on pain behavior and vice versa, and the role of stress and sex hormones in these processes.

Three important/interesting topics in neuroscience are:

1) Like Bo-Rin mentioned, I think it will be interesting to discover the extent and consequences of neural plasticity in the central nervous system, specifically in terms of learning, perception, and recovery from damage.

2) As psychology and biology continue to merge, I think it will be interesting to find the biological basis for even the most complex cognitive processes, including self-consciousness (e.g., self schemas, body representations, etc.).

3) I am also interested in research that strives to apply behavioral neuroscience to a clinical setting. Once we understand the neural basis of phenomenon like love, social anxiety, and language, I will be curious to see how techniques are developed to manipulate these processes for therapeutic or cosmetic purposes.

Hi everyone,

My name is Sara Berman, and I'm a biology major at Haverford. My thesis is investigating the mechanisms of axon guidance, which refers to how axons in the developing brain pathfind their way from one location in the brain to another to form correct and functioning neural circuits. Specifically, my project is looking at the role of the atypical neurotransmitter nitric oxide (NO) in retinal axon guidance (the formation of the neural circuit that connects the retina to the optic tectum). I initially became interested in nitric oxide because I read a number of papers that implicated over-expression of NO in neuropsychological diseases (OCD, Tourette's), and wanted to understand how NO expression is necessary for nervous system development in the first place. I think I offer a unique perspective to this class because I've taken a number of classes and have been conducting research on the molecular mechanisms of nervous system activities - I hope that combining this knowledge with some of my colleagues who have taken more psychology classes will help all of us to put together a larger scale picture that synthesizes molecular research data with experiential/psychology data. 

In my opinion, the three most important/interesting topics in neuroscience are:

1.  Achieving a greater understanding of neurodevelopment so that we can use this information to rewire circuits that have been damaged through disease (Alzheimer's, Parkinson's etc.) or injury.

2. Conducting more research on the role of glial cells, as they may contribute more to neuroscientific processes than scientists originally thought.

3. Similar to what Bo-rin said, understanding what is physically wrong in the brain and its associated chemicals/neurotransmitters in diseases such as depression, bi-polar disorder etc., so that better and more effective treatments for these devastating illnesses can be developed.

See you all on Monday.