https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.113.46

I was recently honoured with the Undergraduate Prize from The Physiological Society for my results in physiology modules and my final year dissertation project.

I have always been fascinated with processes too complex to understand by looking at a single mechanism. The first time I learned about such phenomena was during my physiology courses in the first two years of my degree. Understanding these required zooming into the cell to explore its genetics and biochemistry, and then zooming out on the intercellular interactions making up a tissue’s local microenvironment, which would then influence the functioning of a whole system. It wasn’t long before I became amazed by neuroscience, where several nearly simultaneous molecular events, often distant spatially, underlie complex higher functions such as behaviour or emotion.

To become involved in neuroscientific research, I pursued a placement at Karolinska Institutet between the second and final years of my degree. I worked on the generation of in vitro neural models from human pluripotent stem cells. These cells can be derived from the inner cell mass of a structure which emerges within the first week after ovum fertilisation. Alternatively, they can be created from adult somatic cells.

They can develop into any cell within a human body. Such cells can be used for preclinical disease investigation and therapy development.

My colleagues were using these models to study psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. I have always wanted my research to be meaningful, and I soon felt very passionate about psychiatry. Thus, towards the end of my placement, I keenly took the opportunity to get involved in a project studying the influence of adolescent stress on psychiatric outcome.

Having identified statistical data analysis as a key skill in research, I was hoping my final year dissertation topic would allow me to learn it. Fortunately, the project I got allocated was the “Analysis of sleep spindle oscillations in the cortex of rats.” The task was to characterise a specific rhythmic activity of the non-rapid eye movement stage of sleep, called the sleep spindle. The aim was to describe its parameters in the rat model, commonly used in sleep research, and compare it to the literature on human sleep. I was very lucky to work under Julie Seibt’s supervision, as she helped me throughout my project.

These various experiences allowed me to identify the aspects of scientific work I enjoyed most, and I integrated them in my search for a PhD. I was extremely happy to be admitted for a PhD at King’s College London to investigate the development of psychosis, combining data analysis, complex neuroscience and a sense of meaning in a single project. As I am facing my doctoral programme, I feel grateful for the recognition of the Undergraduate Prize and encouraged to continue setting myself more and more ambitious goals.

I would like to thank Rita Jabr, The Physiological Society Representative at the University of Surrey once again for putting me forward, and my physiology lecturers without whom I couldn’t have achieved such results. I would also like to acknowledge Julie Seibt for her invaluable help throughout my dissertation project.