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Newsletter of the Western North Carolina
Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience
August 2013 – Issue # 15
Fall Membership Drive & New Officers
by David Riddle, Ph.D., President of WNCSfN
Inside this issue:
President’s Welcome………………1
Mentorship Award………………….1
SfN 2013 Dates……………………….2
WNCSfN Membership……………..2
Milligan New Director…………….3
Oppenheim Neuroscience
Pioneer……………………………...4
Grad Student Toolbox ……………5
New Journal Club……………………5
Brain Awareness Council
Update………………………………6
“Hallucinations” Book Review…7
GSA Fall Event………………………..7
Award Recipients…………………...8
More summer photos on
page 8!
WNCSfN Officers:
President:
David Riddle, Ph.D.
Secretary/Treasurer:
Thomas Perrault, Ph.D.
Councilors:
David Friedman, Ph.D.
Wayne Pratt, Ph.D.
Clinical Councilor:
Michael Cartwright, M.D.
Postdoctoral Councilor:
Dana GreeneSchloesser, Ph.D.
Page | 1
As we enter a new academic year, I welcome our beginning students and others who are
new to the Western North Carolina neuroscience community. Looking toward the coming
year, let me bring your attention to two items.
We are getting ready to kick off a major membership drive. In the new reality in which
we exist, institutional funds for support of the Chapter and its activities are minimal. Our
only reliable source of support is the membership fees paid by individual members. The
fees have remained unchanged for many years and remain, for now, at the bargain prices of
$30 for one year/$75 for three years for faculty, $20/$50 for post-docs, and $15/$35 for
students. Don’t worry if you don’t remember when you last renewed; we know and will be
in touch soon. Hopefully everyone in the community will respond quickly and favorably so
that we can establish a budget for the year and plan activities appropriately. These funds are
critical to support the Fall Research and Poster Day, visiting speakers, and other activities.
Please note that strong financial support from members can be helpful when we approach
the administration, Society for Neuroscience grants programs, or others seeking additional
funds for activities. So please join or renew and, if you know someone that’s new to our
neuroscience community, send them a copy of The Neurotransmitter, fill them in on the
chapter and its activities, and encourage them to join. Membership forms are available on
our website at http://www.wfubmc.edu/SfN/. See page 2 for more details.
In the coming month we will elect new members of the chapter executive committee,
including a new president, secretary/treasurer, student and post-doctoral councilors, and a
councilor. Faculty, students and postdoctoral fellows who wish to be considered as
councilors should let me know by email (driddle@wakehealth.edu), or nominate colleagues
who you believe could serve the community in this way.
Nader & Czoty awarded the Neuroscience Program
Mentorship Award
By Sarah Kromrey, Neuroscience Graduate student
My co-advisors Dr. Michael Nader and Dr. Paul Czoty recently won the Neuroscience
Program Mentorship Award. The effort that both of them put forth on a daily basis to best
meet my graduate training needs speaks volumes to their commitment to be the finest
mentors possible. Individually, either Dr. Nader or Dr. Czoty could have provided
unsurpassed mentoring to assist in my development into a proficient neuroscientist, but
through working together as co-advisors, they have offered complementary support,
encouragement and advice. During my time in the lab, I have attended family dinners,
sporting events and competed in mud runs with my advisors (picture on pg 3). They
believe that their obligations to me as mentors extend beyond my proficiencies in the
laboratory, into supporting me as a happy individual in my personal life as well.
Both Dr. Nader and Dr. Czoty have offered profound encouragement to me to help me
continue my development into a successful professional and although their support and
encouragement remain unfaltering throughout my development, the advice they provide to
me on a daily basis has changed in response to my needs. (Continued on page 3)
The Neurotransmitter
Become a
Member of the
WNCSfN!
Don’t Miss the “Cool” Stuff: Optimize Your Time at SfN 2013!
By Ashley Wagoner, Neuroscience Graduate Student
I attended SfN for the first time in San Diego 2010. As a senior in college I was so
overwhelmed with meeting professors, (trying to get into graduate school), and getting free
pens that I missed Glenn Close’s lecture on mental illness and how it has shaped her life.
HOW COULD I MISS GLENN CLOSE? Well, it was my first international conference, so I
was handed the program (more like encyclopedia), and just winged it. I’m sure I missed a lot
of other interesting lectures, social and networking events, and free gadgets during the
conference too.
Luckily, since then I’ve discovered the online SfN program and the Neuroscience
Meeting Planner, which has made it easier to not miss out on events like Chuck Close (2012)
and the Graduate Student Fair. This year SfN fails to disappoint. A preview of this year’s
featured lectures include the Neuroscience and Society Lecture by Ed Catmull, President of
Walt Disney and Pixar Animation studios or the History of Neuroscience Lecture by Roy A
Wise from NIDA. This year, be more prepared than my undergrad self and plan ahead! The
preliminary program is now available and important dates are below. The next issue of the
Neurotransmitter will be full of information about the featured and special lectures,
networking events, and making the most of SfN 2013 in San Diego, CA!
The
Western
North
Carolina Chapter of the
Society for Neuroscience
(WNCSfN), a division of SfN,
is dedicated to promoting
education in the Neurosciences, facilitating Neuroscience outreach in the
western North Carolina area,
and encouraging interaction
among Neuroscience professionals within our research
community. The WNCSfN
sponsors numerous events
including a fall poster session,
an annual research symposium, and multiple Brain
Awareness Council activities
in the community. You can
view all our current and past
activities on our website.
Membership dues make a
significant and consistent
contribution to our annual
budget. We are therefore
inviting all faculty, staff,
graduate
students,
postdoctoral fellows, and medical
residents with interest in the
Neurosciences to join the
Chapter. Please send us your
name, title, department, and
email address, along with your
dues (cash or check made
payable to WNCSfN) to Dr.
David Riddle, Department of
Neurobiology & Anatomy,
Wake Forest School of
Medicine, Medical Center
Blvd, Winston-Salem, NC
27157.
Membership Dues:
Regular
Postdoc
Student
Page | 2
The Neurotransmitter
1 Year
3 Years
$30
$20
$15
$75
$50
$35
Nader/Czoty Award continued…
Milligan advances to Neuroscience Program Director
As a 3rd year student, they no longer
need to oversee my data as they once did,
and instead offer me insight into different
ways of approaching scientific questions,
balancing data collection and manuscript
preparation and are consistently my
source of problem-solving and career
development advice. The mutual respect
that I feel from both of these mentors is
incomparable.
Regardless
of
our
surroundings, be it a private meeting or at
public conferences, I feel as though both
speak with me as if we are scientific
equals, not student and faculty. Because
of this, they have instilled in me the
confidence and tools to socialize with
professionals of all levels, a trait that I am
certain will serve me well as I advance to
a postdoctoral role and into a successful
professional researcher. I have no doubt
that the extensive effort both of these
renowned scientists have dedicated to me
over the past few years (and continue to
inspire in me) will allow me to develop into
an expert researcher and one-day mentor
to future scientists.
By Jamie Rose, Neuroscience Graduate student
Dr. Carol Milligan was
recently named Director
of the Program in Neuroscience! She did her PhD
work at The Medical
College of Pennsylvania
and postdoctoral fellowship at University of
Massachusetts, Amherst. Dr. Milligan is currently
Professor in the department of Neurobiology and Anatomy in the Wake Forest School of Medicine.
Her research focuses on understanding mechanisms that contribute to
motoneuron dysfunction and degeneration in diseases such as Amyotrophic
Lateral Sclerosis. Her lab has been continually funded, published numerous
manuscripts and “graduated” graduate students who have gone on to
positions at NINDS, Arizona State University and Eli Lily. Dr. Milligan has
served on NIH or VA study sections continually over the past 12 years. She
brings her research and mentoring expertise to the table, as well as the
drive to continue the success of the Neuroscience Program. In addition to
contributing to the world’s understanding of the molecular mechanisms
mediating neuronal cell death and survival in the central nervous system,
Dr. Milligan has spent her career working toward further developing our
graduate program. She was a member of the task force who developed
the foundation for the combined Neuroscience track and served as a
member of the Executive Committee. She has also served on the Program’s
Student Advisory, Curriculum and Admissions Committees. She has also
served on the Program’s Student Advisory, Curriculum and Admissions
Committees. She is also the Director of our Clinical Neuroscience Course
that involves over 40 clinicians and basic scientists. Dr. Milligan will now be
guiding the Program in Neuroscience with Dr. Oppenheim’s retirement in
June of this year; however, she believes and emphasizes that no one will
replace him, stating “his experience, expertise and vision for the program
allows me to start on a very strong foundation.”
Pictures: Right Above: Members of the Czoty/Nader
lab at the Tough Mudder Race in Fall 2012!
Top Left: left to right: Marlena Kuhn (MD/PhD
student), Carol Mansfield (lab tech), Matthew
Martin (Med student), Jane Strupe (lab tech), Mac
Robinson, Ph.D. (Instructor Department of
Neurobiology and Anatomy), Kristen Sanders
(Graduate Student), Carol Milligan, Ph.D. (Professor
Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Director
ALS Center Translational Science Unit), Sharon
Vinsant (Research Associate). Not pictured: Ron
Oppenheim, PhD, Professor Department of
Neurobiology and Anatomy, Director of the
Neuroscience Program
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The Neurotransmitter
Recently, I asked Dr. Milligan about her vision for the future of the
Program in Neuroscience. As a molecular neuroscientist, Dr. Milligan is
well-versed in the building blocks necessary to create a solid, dynamic and
well-functioning system. One of the primary building blocks of the Program
in Neuroscience is the outstanding faculty associated with the program.
These individuals are critical in maintaining the success of the Neuroscience
program, and Dr. Milligan commends them, noting that they are all
“accomplished investigators that are recognized and respected locally,
nationally and internationally.” Additionally, Dr. Milligan believes that the
time and intellect our faculty members have invested on NIH study
sections, as journal editors and as leaders in the neuroscience community
at large, is reflected in the successful post-graduate careers our trainees
move on to. She charges the faculty members to remember that they are
part-in-parcel of a successful, world-renowned neuroscience program, and
urges them to continue building collaborations and professional
relationships that promote innovative new projects and avenues of
research. (Continued on page 6)
Dr. Ronald Oppenheim: Pioneer in Neuroscience
By Amie Severino, Neuroscience Graduate Student
When Dr. Ronald Oppenheim started grad school at Washington University in St. Louis he
was in a time where Neuroscience graduate programs simply didn’t exist. In fact, it wasn’t
until 1966, one year before he graduated with his PhD in Neurobiology and Zoology, that the
first graduate program in Neuroscience was founded at Harvard University. Luckily for the
future of all of us in the Neuroscience program, Dr. Oppenheim wasn’t deterred by the non
-existence of Neuroscience; in fact he was inspired to create his own curriculum to supplement
his program’s requirements in biology. He constructed an interdisciplinary program for himself
by taking courses with medical students and psychology students to get a comprehensive
education in brain sciences. This self-made program gave him the foundation to provide
guidance for the formation of the Neuroscience program at UNC Chapel Hill in 1970 and later
here at Wake Forest University in 1983.
Dr. Oppenheim’s body of research is extensive and impressive. On my desk currently is his
CV--one that could eat my CV for breakfast and probably need seconds. His interests in
neural development and apoptotic processes lead him to look at the neuromuscular junction and it’s degeneration in ALS (Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis)
or Lou Gehrig’s disease. To me, it’s fitting that Dr. Oppenheim would be
interested in the complexity of development. His work focuses on how neurons
create and maintain appropriate connections, and how without them there must
be regulated cell death to create order. The formation and strengthening of
connections to create function is a process that seems to transcend neural
development and applies to the core philosophy of Neuroscience education.
Neuroscience is inherently an interdisciplinary science, where cell and
molecular processes are just as important to understand as complex behavioral
outcomes. As the program founder and director, Dr. Oppenheim wanted to
create and maintain connections between disciplines to create a strong
Neuroscience program.
The history of the Neuroscience program here at Wake Forest University is fraught
with bureaucratic difficulty and struggles to assimilate scientists of different backgrounds.
At first Dr. Oppenheim was met with a lot of resistance, as professors in the Anatomy and
Physiology/Pharmacology departments were understandably reluctant to lose their unique
identities through their separate disciplines. However, neuronal development itself shows
us that sometimes change is good. Things need to be pruned and reconnected to be most
efficacious, and fortunately this ideology prevailed in the Neuroscience department. Dr.
Oppenheim cites the key to his success at this time eventually depended on faculty turnover. He says this sort of challenge mirrored the evolution of Neuroscience on the national
scale, where departments disappeared and entire conferences were abandoned to flood the
revolutionary field of Neuroscience. Even still, at Wake Forest and on the national scale,
scientists were not the only barrier to creating the field. Non-scientists with religious
convictions about molecular research were hesitant to advance the field in this direction.
About 15 years ago at Wake Forest University, a Dean with moral opposition to stem cell
research actually made it difficult for Dr. Oppenheim to encourage faculty with interest in
gene technology. This ideology took a long time to fizzle out, but progressive thought and
persistance prevailed to create a legacy in this institution that is invaluable to rising scientists.
Despite whatever challenges that hinder the progression of science, I still think all of us have dreams for the future of
innovation. I wanted to know if Dr. Oppenheim expected the future to be this way during the early years of his career. The
Jetsons are still a long ways out from 2013 and I was worried that he might be disappointed or bored with the level of scientific
progress we have achieved. It was relieving to me that he was enthusiastic and excited for the advances and future of science. He
is impressed with the initiatives we’ve made in molecular biology towards understanding genomics, how the environment
impacts gene regulation via epigenetics, and the amazing advances in imaging and brain connectivity mapping. I am glad to see
that someone who has been a scientist for over 50 years is not jaded in the way I hear people talking about science lately, who
still has wonder and excitement for the future and who will probably have his nose in a journal for the next half century. I think
everyone at Wake Forest University would like to thank Dr. Ronald Oppenheim for his service in this institution and in the
scientific community, and we all can give back to him by authoring some of these articles he wants to read in the future.
Page | 4
The Neurotransmitter
New Fall Journal Club!
Communicating Science to the
General Public
Community outreach is an
important
tool
for
fostering
excitement in science, sharing
knowledge with future generations,
and improving support for research
funding. An essential component of
community outreach is being able to
effectively communicate science to
lay audiences. To help build this
skill, a new journal club entitled
“Communicating Science to the
General Public” is being offered this
semester through the neuroscience
program at Wake Forest.
The goal of this journal club is to
introduce students to basic concepts
in lay language communication and
to give students practice in
presenting scientific material to lay
audiences. Students will present
and discuss a wide range of journal
articles using language that can be
understood
by non-scientists.
Students will gain skills not only in
translating research findings, but
also in explaining their significance
and impact.
More than a dozen students in
several
programs,
including
neuroscience,
physiology
and
pharmacology, microbiology and
immunology, cancer biology, and
biomedical engineering have already
expressed interest, so we are
looking forward to a vigorous
program. If you have any questions
or comments regarding the course
or would like to participate, please
contact
Nichole
Emerson
at
nemerson@wakehealth.edu
The “Grad Student Tool Box” is a new
feature of The Neurotransmitter the
newsletter staff is trying to implement for
future issues. We are striving to provide
helpful resources geared towards
graduate students in order for us all to fill
our “tool boxes” with the skills and
knowledge needed to survive graduate
school and succeed in our future careers.
If you have any ideas or resources you
would like to share please email Ashley
Wagoner.
Page | 5
Grad Student Tool Box
Finding Your Perfect Postdoc: Initial Steps Leading Up to an Interview.
By Jackson Taylor, PhD
Twelve months out from my expected graduation date, I had not put a lot of thought
into my post doc, but was confident that I would end up in a big name lab, where I would
pursue my ideal project while being taught cutting edge techniques. I had a good CV: an
NRSA, two respectable first-author papers, and a third soon to be on its way to a highimpact journal. As soon as that last paper was off, I thought, I’d be set. Some professors
told me to “start applying a year out, at least,” but I didn’t think I had time to look while I
was still furiously working on my final paper (which was also the bulk of my dissertation),
and also I didn’t feel confident enough to apply to high caliber labs until my paper was at
least “under review” in an eye-catching journal. So I put the post doc search aside until this
last piece was in place, which would certainly only take another month or two. Eight
months later the paper was accepted for review, and there I was: four months from my
planned graduation date and the end of my secured funding, without so much as an
interview lined up. I was still confident at this point – at least all the pieces were in place,
finding a great post doc would be easy now, I thought. Wrong. Instead, I went through six
months of frequent rejection, promising leads that fell through, escalating panic and
despair before I finally found my “perfect postdoc.”
Besides waiting too long, my next problem was that I had a very ambitious, but also very
nebulous, idea of what I wanted to do. This, in turn, contributed to subpar “cold” e-mails.
In the beginning, I spent upwards of 6-8 hours reading and researching each professor
before e-mailing them, yet the e-mails were too long, unfocused, and ineffective. This
process was time-consuming and demoralizing, but also necessary for me to finally reach a
point where I had a coherent, confident notion of precisely what I wanted to do. Another
issue was that I was trying to enter a field in which I was not highly experienced. Why
should a PI take someone who will require additional training when there is an abundance
of already-qualified applicants? A notable piece of advice I got was to make sure to
market your skills well, i.e. say what you are uncommonly good at and how that can help
the professor. For me, the right e-mail ended up being about 200 words in three short
st
paragraphs. Everything should be as concise as humanly possible. In the 1 paragraph:
introduce yourself, your interests, and how your interests relate to this professor. In the
nd
2 : tout your skills and how they can serve the professor, and your top accolades. Finish by
encouraging a dialogue (via phone, Skype, etc), and thank them for their time. With the
right e-mail, I soon found several positive responses. However, I also began to realize just
how distant a positive e-mail response is from an actual position.
In the end, I found a position here at Wake Forest that had everything I ever wanted.
This came about somewhat serendipitously through personal connections and networking,
which leads to my final and most important point— talk to as many people as you can. This
can lead to unexpected opportunities, and face-to-face interaction always trumps a cold email. Here some additional tips:
 Start early! “Yeah, let me just finish this…” No, really, start early. But why?
o Even with a positive initial response, it can take a long time to set up an
interview and an even longer time after that before the PI is ready for you to
start.
o Contacting a P.I. one-to-two years out from graduation demonstrates sincere
interest and commitment. The closer you are to graduation, the more likely
you are to seem desperate.
 NIH RePORTER and Google are your best friends for finding people with money and
open positions.
 Have a clear understanding of your current advisor’s funds and ability (or lack thereof)
to support you post thesis defense, either as “student” or postdoc.
 Talk to everyone you can, even if it doesn’t seem obviously productive. Networking
and personal interactions are king, outweighing even a golden CV.
 A small to moderate part of this all is just luck, e.g. applying at the right time.
 Don’t count your chickens before they hatch — an interview is a big accomplishment
but it is still miles away from an actual offer. Remain diligent until you have a written
offer in hand.
The Neurotransmitter
Brain Awareness Council Update
By Jamie Rose, Neuroscience Graduate Student
This year, Brain Awareness Season was a total hit! Brain Awareness
Season is a nation-wide campaign to increase public awareness, interest and
education in basic and neuroscience research. Every year, the Brain
Awareness Council at Wake Forest,hosts events throughout the greater
Winston-Salem Area, inviting children, students, and parents to learn about
the neural correlates of behaviors we often take for granted. This year, the two
main events during Brain Awareness Season took place at SciWorks and the
Children’s Museum of Winston Salem. In these events, we reached thousands
Winston-Salem area residents! If you would like to get involved in Brain
Awareness Council or Brain Awareness Season, please contact Jamie Rose
at jamrose@wakehealth.edu.
This fall BAC will kick off with a general meeting on September 5th at
12PM. The BAC general membership meeting is a phenomenal way for
students, faculty and staff to get an overview of the goals and activities of the
BAC. There are millions of ways to contribute to the council if you’re interested
in participating including volunteering at school visits, station development,
and joining the Steering Committee. Any and all graduate students,
postdoctorates, faculty, and staff are welcome to the meeting and to join BAC!
We’d love to see you there!
Neuroflix: Previously known as Neuroscience and a Movie, Neuroflix is an
event hosted at a local restaurant where students and community members
come together to watch a current movie and discuss neuroscience-related
disorders with research and medical professionals. The next Neuroflix event
will highlight Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – Look for advertisements in the
upcoming months!
Milligan Neuroscience director continued…
As the new Director of the Program in Neuroscience, Dr. Milligan believes
that it is important for her position to provide leadership and promote the
development of innovative and collaborative training that serves graduate
trainees, postdoctoral fellows and faculty members. To support this training,
Dr. Milligan recognizes the importance of reliable funding, and plans on
working with faculty and administration of the graduate school to develop
strategies to consistently fund the current and incoming Neuroscience
students. Dr. Milligan’s determination to ensure that graduate students are
given every opportunity to obtain the knowledge and experience to succeed
and take on their future scientific endeavours after completing their PhDs is
reassuring students during this time of transition and uncertainty.
To continue the great legacy of the Program in Neuroscience at the Wake
Forest University, Dr. Milligan understands that we must maintain high-quality
training, beginning with the basic fundamentals of neuroscience, and
continuing through graduation, with intense student-faculty interactions.
Furthermore, Dr. Milligan plans on expanding the current research
opportunities afforded to trainees to include training in fields such as
translational neuroscience, pharma technology, clinical trial design,
epidemiology, bioinformatics, and bio-innovation. This additional training will
open doors to novel and exciting research opportunities for current and future
trainees, allowing us to stay competitive with scientists world-wide.
I, along with all others at this institution, would like to extend a warm welcome
to Dr. Milligan! Her new position as the Director of the Program in
Neuroscience, paired with her progressive mindset, will undoubtedly bring the
Neuroscience program to even greater heights.
Page | 6
The Neurotransmitter
From top to bottom: 1. Janel Suburu,
Cancer Biology graduate student at
the Brain Anatomy coloring station.
2. Johannes Plate, Neuroscience
graduate student showing the four
lobes of the brain at the Human
Brain station 3. Dominc Gioia,
Neuroscience graduate student,
helping a student build-a-neuron!
Popular Science Book Review:
“Hallucinations” by Oliver Sacks
By Chris Schaich, Physiology & Pharmacology Graduate Student
One astonishing revelation of the human mind uncovered by the study of
neuroscience is the fragility of our perception of reality: a mild imbalance in the
activation of certain neuronal circuits from drug use or psychiatric disease is often
sufficient to evoke profound alterations in sensation and perception. We call these
precepts that form in the absence of external reality hallucinations. Despite the stigmas
associated with them, drug users and the mentally ill are far from the only people who
experience hallucinations. In fact, hallucinogenic experiences are a nearly universal
phenomenon. As Dr. Oliver Sacks illustrates in his most recent book Hallucinations,
they can provide deep insight into how the human brain functions.
Dr. Sacks has a gift for crafting a compelling narrative out of the human nervous
system, and he accomplishes this in Hallucinations by combining medical history,
scientific background, fascinating (and sometimes downright bizarre) case studies of his
patients, as well as his own personal experience. Perhaps because he experienced it
himself, Dr. Sacks begins by describing a common (yet little recognized) condition
called Charles Bonnet Syndrome (CBS) that afflicts older people suffering from visual
impairment. CBS is marked by the experience of a wide spectrum of intensely vivid, complex visual hallucinations. Patients
report seeing anything from faces, common objects, repetitive patterns, and even rows of text or sheet music. Often times a
“scene” composed of hallucinatory people and objects will play in the patient’s visual field.
Patients with CBS are not united by dementia or mental illness, as many doctors mistakenly diagnose. Rather, they suffer
from deficits in the visual field. The visual damage that yields CBS hallucinations can arise in the eye (due to macular
degeneration, for example) or in the brain, especially in areas of the cortex associated with the visual pathway. Dr. Sacks
describes the pioneering research of British psychiatrist Dominic ffytche, who, using fMRI, discovered a “striking
correspondence” between the particular hallucinatory experiences of CBS patients and specific portions of the visual pathway
that become activated while the patient is hallucinating. For instance, hallucinations of faces were associated with activation of
the fusiform gyrus and the superior temporal sulcus, brain areas known to be specialized for the representation of faces and
facial features, respectively.
As the remainder of Hallucinations reveals, there are hallucinations for every perceptual experience—those of sound, smell,
touch and taste, as well as complex, multimodal hallucinations involving a combination of the senses—and their origin is in the
brain. Dr. Sacks devotes chapters to describing visual auras seen by sufferers of migraines and epilepsy, and even recounts his
own experiences while under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs to hilarious effect. The recurring theme of the book is that
the vast majority of people who experience hallucinations are not crazy; the patients Dr. Sacks describes are instead treated as
privileged observers of singular neurological phenomena.
Dr. Sacks ascribes an almost romantic quality to hallucinations, frequently citing patients who describe their experiences as
comforting and even inspiring. Among the more interesting segments are his discussions of how hallucinatory experiences
may have contributed to works of art and literature, including myths and certain religious beliefs. “Hallucinations,” writes Dr.
Sacks, “beyond any other waking experience, can excite, bewilder, terrify, or inspire, leading to the folklore and the myths
(sublime, horrible, creative, playful) which perhaps no individual and no culture can wholly dispense with.” As Dr. Sacks
brilliantly illuminates in Hallucinations, the brain frequently separates our sense of what is real and what is illusory with a
fuzzy line.
Graduate Student Association Update!
The GSA at Wake Forest has set a date for the
first event of the Fall! This event will be a social
mixer for graduate students and a meeting to select
GSA departmental Representatives. If you want to
become a departmental representative
(*Neuroscience rep needed), have any questions,
or suggestions for GSA, please email Swapnil
Shewale @ sshewale@wakehealth.edu.
Page | 7
The Neurotransmitter
Date: Friday September 6th, 2013
Time: 6PM-10PM
Where: Old Winston Social Club,
1131 Burke Street,
Winston-Salem, NC 27101
All Graduate students are welcome! Free food and
drink specials will be available!
The WNCSfN and Neurotransmitter Staff would like to congratulate the
following students and faculty for their recent awards!
Neuroscience Program Teaching Award 2012 - In recognition of outstanding
teaching efforts, encouragement, and inspiration to future generations of
neuroscientists.
 David Riddle, PhD, Neurobiology & Anatomy
Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Awards (NRSAs) from the NIH:
 Svitlana Bach, neuroscience graduate student, advised by Dr. Ashok Hegde
 Malaak Moussa, neuroscience graduate student, advised by Dr. Paul Laurienti
& Dr. Linda Porrino
 Mary Jane Skelly, neuroscience graduate student, advised by Dr. Jeff Weiner
 Jamie Rose, neuroscience graduate student, advised by Dr. Sara Jones
Glenn/American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) Scholarship:
 Alexander Birbrair, neuroscience graduate student, advised by Dr. Osvaldo
Delbono
National Science Foundation (NSF) Predoctoral Research Fellowship Award:
 Chris Hauser, neuroscience graduate student, advised by Dr. Terrence
Stanford & Dr. Emilio Salinas
We also want to extend congratulations to Dr. Dwayne Godwin for becoming the
new Dean of Graduate Programs in Biomedical Sciences at Wake Forest!
Summer time in
Science!
Even though we all work
hard during the summer, we
also like to have a little fun
too. Here are some photos
WNCSfN members shared
with the Neurotransmitter!
Top Row: David Riddle, PhD,
spent some quality vacation
time in Africa and snapped
photos of many animals in the
wild including elephants and
leopards!
2nd row: Mahsa Parvizi,
neuroscience grad student,
went cliff diving into Crater Lake
in Oregon! - Nichole Emerson,
neuroscience grad student, and
her family went to the beach
and hung out with a bright
yellow python!
Bottom Row: Amie Severino,
neuroscience grad student,
went to Firefly Music Festival in
Delaware to see bands like the
Avett Brothers (WNC natives!) Susan Appt, DVM, went
whitewater kayaking in Ecuador
(on page 1 too)
Page | 8
The Neurotransmitter
The Neurotransmitter
Staff:
Co-editors:
Ashley Wagoner,
Graduate Student
Neuroscience Program
Dwayne Godwin, Ph.D.
Neurobiology & Anatomy
Contributors:
David Riddle, Ph.D.
WNCSfN President
Neurobiology & Anatomy
Amie Severino,
Graduate Student
Neuroscience Program
Chris Schaich,
Graduate Student
Integrative Physiology &
Pharmacology Program
Jamie Rose,
Graduate Student
Neuroscience Program
Sarah Kromrey,
Graduate Student
Neuroscience Program
Nichole Emerson,
Graduate Student,
Neuroscience Program
Jackson Taylor, Ph.D.
Postdoctorate, Gerontology &
Geriatric Medicine
Interested
in
contributing to
The Neurotransmitter?
Please contact
Ashley Wagoner at:
aswagone@wakehe
alth.edu