Stress is a key and inescapable component of life. Our physiology is tuned to accommodate stress, by anticipating and responding reflexively to physical or emotional threats and challenges. An appropriate stress response maintains homeostasis, the healthy state, and prevents harm to the individual. But responding to stress mobilizes considerable physiological resources. Thus, it is important the stress response is terminated and emotional recalibration is achieved once the threat has gone so life can proceed. Nonetheless, complementary innate mechanisms allow these stressful experiences to form strong, long-lasting memories, shaping future behaviors and providing an adaptive and situational advantage for survival. So fundamentally, we are made to deal with stress and overcome it.

Kaela S. Singleton is an NINDS D-SPAN scholar, adjunct professor at Agnes Scott College, and a mentor to her students at Agnes Scott College and Emory University. In this interview, Kaela recounts her experience with imposter syndrome and how to navigate implicit bias in academia. She also discusses successful mentor relationships and her hopes for the future of diversity in academia. Walk us through your career path. I've been interested in neuroscience since seventh grade when I got to dissect a sheep's brain through a science outreach program. That was the only activity in school I thought was really cool and I could imagine doing for the rest of my life. I ended up choosing Agnes Scott College because it had a well-defined neuroscience major. I started research in undergrad and worked in several labs that focused on neurodevelopmental disorders. In graduate school, I researched the molecules that regulate neural development across species and how they differ in function despite being highly conserved across species. My postdoctoral work is focused on neurodevelopmental disorders, using my foundational molecular neuroscience research skills and developmental approaches to investigate how copper and environmental toxins affect fetal development. Despite being a grad student, I didn't think an academic career in neuroscience was a true option for me until I was in my fourth year of graduate school. Up until then I kept going because I enjoyed it and thought it was interesting. I eventually realized there was a reason I was good at it, and that I could be a professor or have my own lab if I wanted.

Kaela S. Singleton is an NINDS D-SPAN scholar, adjunct professor at Agnes Scott College, and a mentor to her students at Agnes Scott College and Emory University. In this interview, Kaela recounts her experience with imposter syndrome and how to navigate implicit bias in academia. She also discusses successful mentor relationships and her hopes for the future of diversity in academia. Walk us through your career path. I've been interested in neuroscience since seventh grade when I got to dissect a sheep's brain through a science outreach program. That was the only activity in school I thought was really cool and I could imagine doing for the rest of my life. I ended up choosing Agnes Scott College because it had a well-defined neuroscience major. I started research in undergrad and worked in several labs that focused on neurodevelopmental disorders. In graduate school, I researched the molecules that regulate neural development across species and how they differ in function despite being highly conserved across species. My postdoctoral work is focused on neurodevelopmental disorders, using my foundational molecular neuroscience research skills and developmental approaches to investigate how copper and environmental toxins affect fetal development. Despite being a grad student, I didn't think an academic career in neuroscience was a true option for me until I was in my fourth year of graduate school. Up until then I kept going because I enjoyed it and thought it was interesting. I eventually realized there was a reason I was good at it, and that I could be a professor or have my own lab if I wanted.

In this Neuroscience 2017 workshop, learn how to create a short, compelling story for your research and develop a flexible strategy to share your scientific story with any audience. Strategies for being clear, concise, and compelling are discussed.

As a kid growing up in Puerto Rico, I didn't hear much about science being done, so I felt it was an endeavor other people did somewhere else. When you come from underrepresented communities, many complex factors affect how you visualize your identity, which impacts career path decisions. There’s often guilt for pursuing science because we feel we should get a more practical job in order to help our communities. But in fact, our communities will be affected — for better or worse — by decisions scientists make. Pursuing science gives us a voice in a space where we have not been represented. Now at this point in my career, I’m driven to empower underrepresented groups to feel they belong, and it’s their right and duty to participate. And yet our full participation depends on more than our own empowerment. It depends on the entire scientific community, regardless of background, working together to expose and change the harmful practices that impede us.

This series features underrepresented scientists pursuing careers in STEM fields. Scientists share examples of challenges caused by being underrepresented in their fields and advice for overcoming them.

SfN’s Early Career Policy Ambassador (ECPA) program is designed to create an extensive network of neuroscience advocates. Ambassadors gain the skills needed to advocate for science and to encourage those in their personal networks to join the conversation. Join ambassadors from the 2019 and 2020 classes as they share their experiences in the program, discuss changes in their advocacy strategies across the years, and answer questions for those interested in taking their advocacy efforts to the next level. Learn more about the ECPA program.

Sleep is a vital physiological phenomenon observed amongst almost all organisms. Although its exact purpose remains elusive, sleep has been linked to memory consolidation. In our present study, we investigated the role of sleep quality on sleep-dependent memory consolidation. Previous studies have shown that tequila , a serine protease, affects long-term memory consolidation in flies. In the present study we identified that the hypomorphic mutation in the tequila gene ( tequila f01792 ) leads to increased day-time sleep fragmentation at a very early age in male flies. Intrigued by this observation, we delved into further understanding the role of tequila in sleep-dependent memory consolidation by manipulating sleep duration using pharmacological methods such as GABA-A agonist. Inducing sleep using GABA-A agonist resulted in improved sleep during the day. This further led to a significant improvement in the long-term memory of these flies when compared to the vehicle-treated flies. In conclusion, day-time d...

Material below summarizes the article, Metabotropic Glutamate Receptor 2/3 (mGluR2/3) Activation Suppresses TRPV1 Sensitization in Mouse, but not Human, Sensory Neurons, published on March 5, 2018, in eNeuro and authored by Tayler D. Sheahan, Manouela V. Valtcheva, Lisa A. McIlvried, Melanie Y. Pullen, David A.A. Baranger, and Robert W. Gereau. Chronic pain is a widespread, debilitating condition in need of effective treatments. Unfortunately, current drugs for pain relief, such as opioids, often have unwanted side effects, including addiction and abuse, which are mediated by off-target drug activity within the central nervous system. Therefore, scientists and clinicians have been particularly interested in identifying new targets for pain relief within the peripheral nervous system. Despite extensive efforts of researchers to develop novel treatments for pain relief, promising drugs identified in rodent models rarely provide effective pain relief in clinical trials with chronic pain patients. One explanation for these failures is there are likely important, yet often overlooked, differences in the physiological effects caused by drugs in humans compared to model organisms such as mice. In response to this criticism, our lab has established an approach to collect and use peripheral sensory neurons from human organ donors to better understand human sensory neuron physiology and how it compares to that of rodents. Previous rodent studies have suggested metabotropic glutamate receptors two and three (mGluR2/3) expressed on sensory neurons are promising targets for pain relief. In a recent publication, we determined mGluR2/3 are also expressed on human sensory neurons.

This resource was featured in the NeuroJobs Career Center. Visit today to search the world’s largest source of neuroscience opportunities. Lena Ting is in the liminal space between computation and neurophysiology, illumining how the brain works with the nervous and musculoskeletal systems to move the body. In this interview she explains how her diverse training experiences allow her to make waves in a new discipline, as director of the Neuromechanics Lab at Emory University, and to bring together researchers from different scientific backgrounds to study movement disorders. She also offers advice for embracing nonlinear thinking and charting your own path. This article is part of Neuronline's interview series "Entrepreneurial Women Combining Neuroscience, Engineering, and Tech," which highlights the career paths and scientific accomplishments of female leaders and role models who are creatively bridging disciplines to improve lives.