\u201cIn my very first lab experience, I just made one formula all summer and it was miserable,\u201d says Ramirez (CAS\u201910). But he was later placed in the lab of Howard Eichenbaum, the late William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor and CAS professor of psychological and brain sciences. It was Ramirez\u2019s first experience with neuroscience, and a first glimpse of what kind of mentor he would become. \u201cEven though I was an undergrad among dozens of senior researchers, my ideas and questions were valued just as much as if they were coming from a grad student or a postdoc,\u201d he says. \u201cIt made me feel like an essential and valued member of the team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ramirez is mapping the brain\u2019s network of engrams\u2014units of memory storage\u2014and devising ways to artificially manipulate memories to alleviate mental health disorders. These areas propel the lab\u2019s activity, which includes student- and postdoc-led projects that seek to answer big questions, such as how do positive and negative memories affect our decisions, and how much control do we have over our fears?<\/p>\n
In October 2022, Ramirez received a $1.15 million Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Science Diversity Leadership Award<\/a>. The award recognized his mentorship of students from underrepresented backgrounds and his promotion of a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion.<\/p>\n Ramirez, who is a Hispanic American and whose family is from El Salvador, didn\u2019t have any Latino mentors in grad school. As a result, he values all the more the role he gets to play in his students\u2019 development.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I give talks, or when I talk to students in my lab, I don\u2019t really leave anything out of the equation. If I have the opportunity to talk about a memory from my childhood of visiting El Salvador for the first time, I\u2019ll use it,\u201d he says. \u201cHopefully, people will be able to see a bit of themselves in whatever story it is that I\u2019m telling. And that makes it safe to be, for example, a Latino in science.\u201d<\/p>\n Ramirez likens mentorship to the act of loading a slingshot: \u201cThat might feel like it takes up a lot of time\u2014you\u2019re pulling back and pulling back. But then when you\u2019re ready to let go, you\u2019re lunging forward, because you have a lot of people who are very capable now of doing all the things that the lab requires.\u201d<\/p>\n More than 40 students work or have worked in the lab, which is part of BU\u2019s multidisciplinary Center for Systems Neuroscience<\/a>, and Ramirez makes it a point to keep in touch with all of them. The current team represents Arts & Sciences, BU\u2019s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, and the Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences. \u201cThe people who have been undergrads are now PhD students, the PhD students are postdocs, and the postdocs are now professors, and everything in between,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty wild; you really see the kind of influence that you can have on lab members and vice versa.\u201d<\/p>\n Arts x Sciences<\/em> spoke to four recent members of Ramirez\u2019s lab about their research, ambitions, and the memories they\u2019ve made.<\/p>\n Kaitlyn Dorst (CAMED\u201923) was one of the first students to join Ramirez\u2019s lab, arriving at BU in 2017 after studying biology at the College of William and Mary. She was fascinated by the lab\u2019s focus on how memory functions\u2014and how it malfunctions.<\/p>\n Dorst studied the \u201cfight, flight, freeze\u201d response, often associated with fear and trauma, in mice. She observed that, when a fear memory is activated, a mouse\u2019s response would depend on the size of its chamber: mice in a smaller chamber would freeze, and mice in a larger chamber would run away. \u201cIt leads us to believe that the brain is being engaged in different ways,\u201d she says. \u201cThere has to be a different engagement of the brain to possibly produce these different types of behaviors.\u201d<\/p>\n Over six years, Dorst has seen the lab expand to include new imaging and cell-tracking technologies, which have allowed team members to expand their data-gathering methods.<\/p>\n One constant, however, has been the sense of community. \u201cWhile we\u2019re in the lab, we can talk about science and talk about life,\u201d she says. The fun times have made for some fond memories, but to Dorst they also speak to something more vital: \u201cI really appreciate that we can remove ourselves [from our work] and support each other scientifically and personally. There are a lot of stressors associated with grad school, and not having my lab environment be toxic is definitely one of my favorite things.\u201d<\/p>\n Sanaa Ahmed\u2019s career goal is simple: she wants to help people. Before coming to BU, Ahmed (CAS\u201923) had lived in the US, Canada, South Africa, and Gabon. The differences in healthcare quality and access she observed in those countries inspired her to pursue medical research.<\/p>\n \u201cLiving in West Africa for over eight years forced the harsh realities of the healthcare system to reveal themselves to me,\u201d says Ahmed. After spending time in a country where sick people did not receive equal, adequate access to routine and emergency medical care, she chose a career path where she could help to close the gap.<\/p>\n Ahmed joined the Ramirez lab as a research assistant in 2022 and, after graduating, has stayed on as a technician. She assists Cristina Delgado Sallent, a postdoctoral fellow, with a study of the therapeutic capacity of psychedelic substances, such as psilocybin, the chemical compound found in hallucinogenic mushrooms, and ketamine.<\/p>\n Recently, they have been performing tests to assess the cognitive effects of different doses of ketamine. The drug may be a better way of treating severe depression than other interventions, such as electroconvulsive therapy.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery day in the lab I learn something new,\u201d Ahmed says.<\/p>\n Albit Caban (CAMED\u201927) studied molecular biology as an undergrad in his native Puerto Rico, but his interest in engrams grew during a neuroscience internship. When he met Ramirez at a neuroscience conference in 2019, Caban shared an idea he had. \u201cHe liked it and he told me to email him a r\u00e9sum\u00e9.\u201d With that, Caban knew that BU was his only choice for grad school.<\/p>\n That idea he had mentioned to Ramirez ultimately became his current research project: a study of how positive and negative memories affect decision-making in rodents. Using a system of lights, tones, and treats, Caban can observe how lab mice make decisions. \u201cMy idea is to see how they balance positive and negative behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n Caban says Ramirez\u2019s leadership style nudged him out of his comfort zone. \u201cIf your idea can be made to sound more sci-fi, he will push you to do it,\u201d Caban says. \u201cHe\u2019s pushed me down a bunch of avenues that I did not think I would have gone.\u201d To Ramirez, with expansion into new imaging and sampling technologies comes the opportunity for team members to broaden their skills and try new things.<\/p>\n Caban, who also oversees a small team of lab assistants who contribute to his project, and who facilitates a scientific journal club, hopes to return to Puerto Rico when he graduates to follow in Ramirez\u2019s footsteps by leading a facility of his own.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m grateful for my mentors,\u201d he says. \u201cI have had probably the best mentors I could ask for since I started in science.\u201d<\/p>\n Michelle Surets (CAS\u201923) formed an early love of scientific research while attending a STEM magnet high school in New Jersey. Halfway through her first year at BU, she decided to apply to Ramirez\u2019s lab and now she\u2019s developed a passion for neuroscience. She spent a few semesters working on an Alzheimer\u2019s-related project, then she transitioned to assist Caban with his study of memory-influenced decision-making. She\u2019s also working on an independent project, inspired by Caban\u2019s research, mapping the neural impact of learning on cue-driven memories.<\/p>\n One of the things Surets appreciates most about her research experience is that there\u2019s no typical day. There are so many different things for undergrads like her to do, she says, depending on their interests and which research project they\u2019re working on. Surets began graduate studies at the medical school in summer 2023. She hopes to become a doctor, and says she\u2019s looking forward to a more human-oriented career path.<\/p>\n \u201cThe people are the thing I\u2019m most grateful for in science,\u201d she says, \u201cSteve, for giving me that shot in my freshman year, the grad students I worked with, and everybody I met along the way, who I\u2019ll never forget\u2014thanks to my hippocampus.\u201d<\/p>\n Neuroscientist Steve Ramirez has built a diverse, vibrant community of young scientists in his memory lab<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":75661,"template":"","department":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazine-articles\/75657"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazine-articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/r_cas_magazine"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazine-articles\/75657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75890,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazine-articles\/75657\/revisions\/75890"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"r_cas_department","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/department?post=75657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Kaitlyn Dorst<\/h2>\n
![\"Kaitlyn](\"\/cas\/files\/2023\/11\/23-1523-CASDORST-004.jpg\")
Sanaa Ahmed<\/h2>\n
![\"Sanaa](\"\/cas\/files\/2023\/11\/23-1524-CASAHMED-003.jpg\")
Albit Caban<\/h2>\n
Michelle Surets<\/h2>\n
![\"Michelle](\"\/cas\/files\/2023\/11\/23-1522-CASSURETS-001.jpg\")
\nBack to full issue<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"