My Internship Site
What are they researching and why?
At this halfway point of the internship, I will take the time to explain the goals of my internship as well as my goals and project. My mentor is Mr. Max Jacobsen and the principal investigators are Dr. Ghetti and Dr. Newell who are both neuropathologists and focus on researching the various types of dementia and neuropathies. One of the biggest tragedies of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's (AD) and related dementias is that a confirmatory diagnosis can only be post mortem. The neurologists can diagnose a patient based upon symptoms and neuroimaging but the ultimate determination rests with the neuropathologist. Neurodegenerative disease are one of the most devastating disorders known to mankind. A person with Alzheimer's slowly loses themselves along with their memories as the disease consumes their brain, a person with Parkinson's loses their ability to initiate movement, a person with Huntington's disease lose their fine motor skill, a person with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and multiple sclerosis watch are they slowing lose control of their body as their nerve cells weaken. The biggest tragedy of these diseases is that there is no cure. There is no medicine that can save the precious neurons and the medical community does not know why these diseases occur, hence neuropathological studies are essential to observe brain changes to begin understanding what goes wrong to lead to these diseases.
My Progress
With so much to learn from my site and their research, I often have difficulty prioritizing what I want to learn about the most! So far I have been reading literature about the various changed and neuropathological observations associated with different disease. I am also observing tissue dissection, slicing, sectioning and finally observing them under the microscope. I am learning the basics of neuropathology by observing under the microscope, asking lots of questions and reading lots of research articles. One of my first goals for this internship was to be immersed in the field of neuroscience. I wanted to learn above and beyond the traditional textbook method, I wanted to see neuroscience in action and make connections between what I learnt in class to what I see in the lab. From the very first day, I was able to do that. I was fascinated with neuroanatomy by looking the pictures in my neuroscience class, but nothing cam close to actually seeing a human brain. I have seen a fresh brain, its dissection, slicing, sectioning, staining, and how it looks underneath the microscope, with a lot of help from professional neuroanatomy textbooks, the process of recognizing structures I had previously learnt about is one of the most satisfying challenges to pursue. As a visual learner, the observations and knowledge I have gained from the internship has solidified my understanding of Neuroscience and Biology.
The more I learn, the more questions I have and the process continues! More specifically, I hope to learn how to write a scientific paper and or poster. A more short term goal is a presentation over a structure that I observed under the microscope and my PI asked me to find more details about. Presenting to experts is a daunting task and I am putting all my efforts towards making sure that the presentation is of high quality. Learning how to present to a wide range is a vital transferable skill and these tasks will teach me how to do that. In terms of the medical field, the technical skill I am learning is to observe keenly using the microscope which is skill I will need in future coursework. Referring back to my LHSI goals document, I set the following goals:
Apply and expand classroom knowledge
Improve as a communicator and team member
Learn to think critically and problem solve in real life situations
Everyday at my site I am working to fulfill these goals. One of the biggest realizations I have to come is that learning, applying, relearning and communicating are life long processes in the medical field. I apply my classroom knowledge and expand them everyday by making new connections with what I see. For example there is an important structure in the brain called as the hippocampus which is responsible for memory encoding and storage, I remember learning that it was called that because it looks like a seahorse. But after looking at dissection and under the microscope, I saw for the first time the resemblance between the structure and a seahorse. In my future classes I will be able to visualize the Hippocampus and other parts of the brain much more easily which will let me learn new topics more easily. One of the things I have done so far is look at cases under the microscope and then guess the diagnosis based upon the case history and neuropathological clues, this has really taught me how to think critically and problem solve because guessing the correct diagnosis requires putting together knowledge in novel ways and finding evidence to support that. I am fulfilling my second goal by observing how a professional research team communicates and emulating those. For example, my PI's and mentor are very busy people and to appreciate their time I have learnt to be more concise in my communication and only ask questions to which I cannot find answers myself.
In the next half of the internship, I want to continue fulfilling these goals and I also want to grow as a professional by learning how to write scientifically and present those to a wide range of audience. This goal along with my first three goals will stay with as a move further along my educational career and eventually I hope to improve those skills.
