Kasey Stern ’21

SUNY Downstate Medical Center, Brooklyn, NY

This summer I interned in a behavioral neuroscience lab at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. I had the privilege of working under Dr. Janina Ferbinteanu, a talented scientist and wonderful mentor. I was essentially playing with rats all summer.

In Dr. Ferbinteanu’s lab, we were looking into the roles different parts of the brain play in memory. I have a family history of Alzheimer’s disease, so I was particularly interested in the work on memory. It was an incredibly rewarding experience, and I learned more than I could have imagined about the brain and what goes into research. I was working in a small lab, so I was able to be a part of all of the steps of the experiment. I spent my first few days getting certified to work with animals and in training. Then, I was thrown right into the experiment with very little oversight; my mentor even left the country for a few weeks, leaving me in charge of her lab. I loved having so much independence and responsibility. It was really cool that she had that level of trust and confidence in me.

For the first few weeks I spent most of my time training six rats that Dr. Ferbinteanu had said would be “my” rats for the summer. I trained these rats in a raised plus maze in two different tasks, a spatial and a cue task. Basically, I would put the rat in on one end and it would have to go find a Froot Loop in one of the arms of the maze. After the animals were trained, completing the task with a lower than twenty percent error rate, they underwent acute intracerebral drug infusion brain surgery, in which neurotoxins were injected into their brains, essentially eliminating that section of the brain. I was able to watch and ask questions during these surgeries, which was really interesting. It was crazy to actually see brain surgeries! Following these surgeries, I tested the rats in the same tasks in which I had trained them pre-surgery. It was really interesting to see the differences that arose as they went through the maze. Once the post-surgery testing was finished, it was time to examine their brains to see if the lesions created by the neurotoxins were in the correct sections of their brains.

In order to prep the brains, we needed to perform profusion surgeries, and after watching several, I got to perform one myself. It was so cool to actually do the procedure! I was excited to identify the different organs inside the rat and see the saline and formalin being pumped through its body by a tube I inserted in the heart. At the end, once the body was fixated properly, I chopped off its head in a rat guillotine, which was kind of creepy. I also learned how to cut cryostat sections of the brains and prepare slides, and I spent a significant amount of time during the later weeks, especially as the rats were recovering from surgeries, interpreting lesions in histology. Interpreting lesions involved looking at sections of the brain and measuring the area of the healthy tissue from either the hippocampus or striatum in order to identify how much of the section was lesioned. While the task itself could feel slow and repetitive, it was really interesting to learn how to identify different sections of the brain and see where the toxins had killed the cells.

Through reading assigned articles and texts, watching graduate presentations, and speaking with both my supervisor and a post-doctoral student, I have learned far more than I could have imagined about memory. I certainly have a deeper understanding of memory systems, and in particular, the activity and role of place cells in the hippocampus. It was great to get so much one on one attention from Dr. Ferbinteanu. She was always available to answer questions and eager to give me outside reading material and then later discuss it. She has added fire to my interest in continuing to learn about the brain.

One of the most rewarding parts of this summer was seeing the beginning of results from this experiment start to form. While we were still in the early stages in terms of all the rats that would still be tested, some of the ways the rats acted in the maze post-surgery were different than Dr. Ferbinteanu and others had seen before. This experiment may have touched upon new discoveries regarding the part of the brain relating to addiction relapse. It will be exciting to hear from Dr. Ferbinteanu what the final results show.

A rat undergoing acute intracerebral drug infusion brain surgery.

Dr. Ferbinteanu has also given me a lot of insight into what a career in neuroscience research would look like and what steps I would need to take to get there. She has taught me a lot about the importance of choosing a good mentor as well as what I ought to look for in a lab. Additionally, Dr. Ferbinteanu talked to me about the many difficulties that I will likely face if I go into this field of science as a woman. She gave me advice about how to avoid being taken advantage of and how I should approach the possible challenges.

Furthermore, going into this internship I understood very little about the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the grant process. Dr. Ferbinteanu opened my eyes to what applying for and receiving a grant entails. The process is certainly more difficult than I had realized. I also learned that there are grants open to graduate students which will be valuable knowledge if I decide to continue down this path. She also described to me the steps one must take in writing and reviewing papers. It was interesting to learn about how this peer reviewing process works and the way in which it allows scientists to learn from one another.

I want to extend a huge thank you to the Class of 1972 and the ’68 Center for Career Exploration for making my internship this summer possible. I am so grateful for the incredible opportunity your support has given me.