Neuroscience Program Puts Students on the Cutting Edge of Brain Research
Julie Ruble '06 explains her research poster to Dr. Ron Hoy, Howard Hughes Medical Institute keynote speaker at the SYNAPSE conference.
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5/3/2006
Contact: Bill Giduz 704/894-2244 or bigiduz@davidson.edu
by John Syme ' 85
Davidson is earning kudos around the nation as a leader in undergraduate neuroscience, a field that is seeing an explosion in technology and innovation as scientists explore the structure and function of the brain and central nervous system.
“Davidson is one of the centers of innovation in the biological and natural sciences,” said Ron Hoy, Ph.D., Cornell University neuroethologist and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Distinguished Speaker in Neuroscience at the SYNAPSE (Symposium for Young Neuroscientists and their Professors in the South East) conference that Davidson hosted March 31-April 1, 2006.
Hoy noted the seminal work of Davidson's R. Stuart Dickson Professor of Psychology and Director of the Neuroscience Program Julio Ramirez and Assistant Professor of Biology Barbara Lom as prime examples of leadership in undergraduate neuroscience -- in teaching, as well as research.
Ramirez was founding president of the Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience (FUN) in 1991, a national organization dedicated to research and education in the neurosciences at the undergraduate level. Lom is founding editor-in-chief of FUN's online scholarly journal, JUNE, the Journal for Undergraduate Neuroscience Education.
“Davidson has a disproportionate impact in relation to its size and location,” Hoy said. “Because faculty and students here are so community-minded and dedicated to teaching, and neuroscience is such a hot area, they are putting it on the map for undergraduates.”
All around him that Saturday morning in the Lilly Family Gallery of Davidson's Chambers Building, the SYNAPSE conference had clearly -- and literally -- put Davidson on the map, too, for some 115 neuroscientists and their professors from 18 institutions across the region. Synapses were indeed firing as the young researchers presented their professional research posters to their peers. Studies included human facial expression, the effects of the amino acid taurine on mood, olfactory development in mice, chronic stress and immune function, Alzheimer's Disease, the effect of incorrect clock settings on human behavior, the “date rape” drug flunitrazepam, and the response of lizards' tails to heat stimuli.
Davidson neuroscience students share a special "synaptic contact" handshake at the SYNAPSE Conference held on campus in early April.
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While the researchers' individual topics may have seemed dissimilar to a layman's first glance, the fact is that many of the neurological mechanisms under study involve the same fundamental molecular actions and cellular behaviors. Those connections are what draw neuroscientists together across disciplines. Further, as science is discovering exponentially more complex ways to study chemical actions and cellular behaviors at the “micro” level, an integrated perspective for exploring the bigger picture is becoming more and more important.
Uncommonly Auspicious
“The brain is a system beyond what we can imagine, and neuroscience is a new science, building on chemistry, molecular biology, psychology…. There's so much room for new discovery,” said James Sanchez ' 07. Sanchez has just won a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship, a highly competitive national award given annually to outstanding undergraduate science students. He is Davidson's fourth neuroscience student to receive one.
Julio Ramirez, Dickson Professor of Psychology, directs Davidson's neuroscience program.
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Sanchez was busy studying brain waves of laboratory rats in Ramirez's lab the week before the conference, alongside Erik Knelson ' 07, and Sean Wentworth ' 05, who stayed on for a post-graduate year at Davidson to work with Ramirez.
“It's uncommon to have a neuroscience lab with such a variety of equipment and new research available to undergraduates,” Wentworth said, ticking off a list of some similarly equipped labs at research universities across the nation. “Undergrads would be washing beakers in those labs.”
Upstairs in the “Lom Lab,” Joey Chow ' 06 was calibrating onscreen neuronal images on Davidson's $237,000 laser scanning confocal microscope, a crown jewel in an array of laboratory equipment that also includes four inverted, time-lapse light microscopes for imaging neurons as they grow in Petri dishes.
“Very few colleges have these (laser confocal) microscopes -- much less let students use them,” Lom said with clear pride in her students' work. “We don't do 'cookbook' labs.”
Davidson's preeminent neuroscience program is the result of a “perfect storm” of a number of factors, including the college's long heritage of a strong pre-medical curriculum and the determination of Ramirez's early days here starting in 1986. He began his career “with chicken wire and spit in the basement of Chambers,” according to Nancy and Erwin Maddrey Professor and Chair of Psychology Ruth Ault. From those humble beginnings, the college's neuroscience synergies grew to encompass funding for 1999's Baker-Watt Science Complex, which includes state-of-the-art facilities and equipment for behavioral neuroscience, psychopharmacology, physiology, surgery, developmental neurobiology, imaging, histology, and animal care.
The expansion of facilities and faculty, along with increased administrative support for grants and contracts, is proving a winning combination that continues to pay off.
State-of-the-art microsurgery equipment facilitates neuroscience research for Belk Scholar James Sanchez '07.
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Neuroscientists Lom, Ramirez and Smith currently enjoy some $1.7 million in active research and education grants from the National Institutes for Health and the National Science Foundation. The neuroscience program also shares in the $1.3 million grant to Davidson College from the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute, covering everything from heavy-hitting equipment and summer research positions to student travel to national conferences and publication in peer-reviewed journals. Ramirez's National Science Foundation grant, the "Director's Award for Distinguished Teaching Scholars," is the highest honor given by the NSF for outstanding work in scientific research and education. Lom's National Science Foundation grant, CAREER Award, recognizes her excellence in research as a young investigator.
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