Week Number 1: Daunting
Hi everyone! I call myself Lavender, a rough translation of my Chinese name, and I'm a rising senior at Cedar Ridge. Coming from a family whose never had a single person pursue anything outside of STEM fields, I'm naturally inclined towards the sciences, but I do have other interests: piano, flute, swimming, art history, shopping, viticulture, and languages. Anyways, I've always wanted to get a feel for what doing research, not the go on the internet and copy/paste sentences for essay assignments kind of research, but research that would have a practical use. So I applied to the HH progam and was (am) absolutely ecstatic to have gotten in to the program.
The lab I'm working in is headed by Dr. William Wetsel, who gave me the impression of being very very busy and intelligent but still caring; however my mentor is Dr. Ramona Rodriguiz, who is an amazing walking encyclopedia of anything and everything that has to do with schizophrenia. I'm going to be learning about the biochemical changes in the brain that underlie schizophrenia and the pharmacology of alleviating the symptoms of schizophrena; my first couple of days in the lab were spent nearly drowning in published papers about schizophrenia and incessantly asking Ramona questions, which eventually pulled me out from the deep end. So far, I've met Caroline, an awesome Korean power girl who just graduated from Duke and is working in the lab to get a feel for where she wants to take her career, and Santowana, a kind and beautiful Nepalese woman who makes sure the mice are healthy and content. There is also Dipendra, Chris and Peter who I haven't met yet beyond an introduction but would like to in the future.
Specifically about what I've learned about schizophrenia:
1. Imbalance of dopamine in the brain is linked to schiz.
2. Deficiency in glutamergic function is linked to schiz.
3. Schiz is not present in an indiviual from birth like Down syndrome is.
4. But, it is linked with genetics--if a twin has schizophrenia, then the other twin has a 50% chance of developing the disease.
5. At some point in human evolution, schiz might have provided an adaptive advantage for some individuals.
