Student Research at Duke

I am not completely sure where my career will take me yet.  Going into Duke, I was set on being a doctor.  My second semester freshman year, I took an econ class and loved the subject.  I had never taken an econ class before.  Now, I am left with a choice.  I still enjoy science, but I also enjoyed econ.  I am positive that I would enjoy both fields.  Luckily, I found a way to wait and delay that decision until later.  I am planning now on majoring in economics, while maintaining the pre-med track.  I can choose to pursue either field when I graduate.

If I am a doctor, I am positive that I want to pursue a career in neuroscience.  I love studying the brain.  The brain is so complex, and so much ls left to still be discovered.

I thought about pursueing a career in research, but I am not sure I would enjoy that career.  I enjoy spending time with people, not just hanging out with the mice.

Whatever I decide to do, I have had a great time this summer and am fascinated by my project.

I had a rough day today. I made several mistakes in the lab today, and my experiment had some rather unusual results.  Now comes the exciting part.  I have to read through numerous articles from Science, Nature, and the Journal of Neuroscience to try and uncover why my mice are preseting unusual results.  I am going to just hope that it is not a result of my mistakes.

I went to the beach this weekend.  I enjoyed taking some time off from the lab just to hang out with friends.  Lab work is fun, but it gets tedious at times.  Lein, my lab partner, had to run experiments on Saturday and Sunday.  While I felt bad for making her work, I enjoyed sitting on the beach.  Everything evens out though, because she left town two weeks ago while I worked over the weekend.  I am now entering the last part of my experiment.  I am running control animals, and more mutants in environmental avoidance to get mroe data.  I am excited about the results.

Currently, 7.7 millino people in the United States have Post Tramatic Stress Disorder.  With thousands of soldiers returning home from Iraq, the Department of Defense in interested in helping create a cure for the disease.  Thousands of dollars are being invested to find a cure.  Despite all this, no mouse model exists for PTSD.  This summer, I am going to examine a mutant mouse that appears to exhibit PTSD symptoms and see if this mouse if the first PTSD mouse model.

To do this, I have to run three experiments.  First, I run a fear conditioning experiment.  For three days, the mice are acclimated to a shocking cage.  On the fourth day, the mice are lightly shocked.  This trauma induced PTSD in the mice.  Then, I examine how the mice act in the shocking cage after being placed in the shocking cage on subsequent days.  Second, I will run an experiment called pre-pulse inhibition.  The mice are placed in a small tube in a sound proof box.  A load noise startles the mice.  For normal mice, they become accostomed to the shock, and eventually the shock startle the mice.  Mice with PTSD continue to be startled and show a larger startle response.  Lastly, I am going to run an experiment called social numbing.  For this experiment, I will examine the mice in their home cages.  PTSD mice tend to being socially isolated, aggressive, and have trouble sleeping.  Hopefully, my experiments will all turn out well.

Dr. Wetsel, department of Psychiatry, is the head of the lab that I am working in this summer.  My mentor is Ramona Rodriguez.  Dr. Wetsel conducts research on mice with a variety of disorders ranging from addiction to cocaine to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  I am going to examine Post Tramatic Stress Disorder in mice.  I tried to upload pictures, but the website would not accept the pictures from my computer.