Alumni

Participants from past Neuroschools

Rome 2008
Genetics of behaviour and psychiatric disorders: from society to the lab and back

EMBL, Monterondo (Rome)
29 September - 4 October 2008

Naozumi Araragi
PhD Student
Klinik und Poliklinik für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie
I am a PhD student in the laboratory of Prof. Lesch at University of Würzburg in Germany. I am originally from Japan and obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Biology at Kyushu University. During this time, I spent one year at University of Bristol in the UK as an exchange student, where I first experienced the excitement of interacting with people from different countries and different cultures. My research interests have always been about neuroscience and I have explored quite a diverse area of neuroscience research. As a bachelor’s thesis, I sequenced glutamate receptor genes of 11 primate species to search for human-specific mutations, which could have led to human-specific cognitive functions.
Subsequently I went again to the UK to do a master’s degree at University of Sheffield. This time, I was focused on a cognitive level of investigation, applying brain imaging techniques such as fMRI. As a dissertation project, I investigated the feasibility of using fMRI to detect neuronal firing in the human visual system. Now as a PhD student, I am engaged in a cellular level of research, namely electrophysiological investigation of serotonin transporter knock-out mice as a model for depression. My past research experience prompts me to try to derive a coherent understanding of human mind, from genes to cognition.
It is always my hope that my research contributes to the welfare of human beings. This is particularly the case with my current PhD project because of its potential clinical implications. In this sense, science and human society can never be separate and it is worthwhile to think about what standpoints scientists can have in society. The NeuroSchool we are having now is the first opportunity for me to discuss such an interesting topic and I am looking forward to an exciting interaction with all the people attending.
 

Rachel Bell
PhD Student BIOS
LSE
My research explores the prevalence and growth of neuroscientific accounts of violent offending, and particularly the use of neuroscience to help understand and manage personality disorders associated with violent offending.
Taking the case study of the British Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder (DSPD) programme, and using a combination of ethnographic, interview and documentary research methods I am investigating the ways in which neuroscientific thought may be deployed and used in this specific environment. I am interested in the effect of the intersections between government policy and funding, medical research, and every day practice on wards for forensic personality disorders. I aim to outline the conditions of possibility for neuroscientific thought and action about offending, to describe the extent of its emergence in the DSPD context, and the mechanisms which have shaped its uptake and development.
My studentship is part of Brain, Self and Society, a three year sociological research project, led by Prof Nikolas Rose, and funded by the British Economic and Social Research Council.
 

Felicity Callard
Senior Research Fellow
Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London
Felicity Callard is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow within the Stakeholder Participation Theme of the NIHR Specialist Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) for Mental Health (South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London). She collaborates, as a qualitative social scientist, with BRC researchers pursuing translational psychiatric research involving genetics and neurobiological models. She is about to embark on two projects investigating how research participants respond to behavioural genetics and to psychiatric research involving biomarkers (one involving participants with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, and the others in treatment for alcoholism who are participating in MRI-based research). She is interested in how frameworks and conceptualisations move from one disciplinary domain to another, and is currently exploring how various models of ‘affect’ indebted to neuroscience are being put to work in social science, and on how and when psychoanalytic concepts cross over into the neurosciences as well as into the social sciences. She also has research interests in the history – as well as the living present – of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Her doctoral research focused on the transformations in psychiatric understandings of agoraphobia from the 1870s to the last quarter of the twentieth century (when, in large part through Donald Klein’s ‘pharmacological dissection’ of anxiety, Panic Disorder came to trump agoraphobia in the DSM–III). Her work has appeared in sociological, cultural-theoretical and mental health journals (including Environment & Planning D: Society and Space, Social & Cultural Geography, Body & Society [forthcoming], and the Journal of Mental Health).
 

Michelle Easter
PhD Student
University of North Carolina
I am a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (U.S.). My dissertation research concerns the idea of a genetic causal factor for eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa. I am in the process of interviewing 40-50 women who have been diagnosed with an eating disorder (half with a current diagnosis and half recovered) to discover how they make sense of the idea of a genetic contribution to eating disorders and what implications it has for them. I am interested in whether and how the idea that a disorder is “genetic” reduces individual responsibility and blame, diverts attention from environmental factors (e.g., family problems, cultural standards of beauty), affects ideas about treatment and recovery, and increases the perception of eating disorders as medical and “biological”. Since 2000, I have worked at the UNC Department of Social Medicine on several projects funded by the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications Program of the National Human Genome Research Institute (National Institutes of Health). I also have a master’s degree in Religious Studies from UNC (1995). I am looking forward to meeting students and faculty at the NeuroSchool.
 

Bonnie Evans
PhD Student, History and Philosophy of Science
Cambridge University
I am currently studying my PhD in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University. I am researching the origins and development of the theorisation of psychiatric disorder in children and adolescents, focussing on the work of two major institutions that have researched and treated children in London – the Maudsley Hospital and the Tavistock Clinic. I have been investigating how the concept of a ‘behavioural problem’ enters into the field of practical child psychiatry in the 1930s, and how this influences later developments in both psychiatry and behavioural genetics in Britain.
I was born and schooled in Hackney, London, also spending some time at school in Manhattan, New York. I studied my undergraduate degree at Sussex University and then went on to study two master’s degrees – the first at Oxford University in Economic and Social History and the second at the Tavistock Centre in Psychoanalytic Studies. I have taken a couple of years out of full-time education to work with disadvantaged children diagnosed with learning and behavioural difficulties in economically deprived areas of London. In returning to research, I am interested in the way that social and environmental factors have been identified within psychiatric epidemiology and genetics, and how this has changed historically. I am particularly interested in the relationship between the conceptualisation of psychiatric disorder within individuals and across populations.
In addition to my main research interests, I have also developed a deep interest in art history, French language and intellectual history, and ashtanga yoga.
 

Neil Allen Gray
PhD Student
Columbia University
Neil Gray is an MD/PhD student at Columbia University in the program for neurobiology and behavior. He comes from Stow, Massachusetts, near Boston. Neil graduated from Oberlin College with a B.A. in Neuroscience, having studied axon-pathfinding in inner ear development. Before beginning at Columbia, he worked for two years at the National Institute of Mental Health, where he studied the mechanisms of medications used in the treatment of bipolar disorder (manic-depressive illness). At Columbia, Neil studies the neurobiology of depression and its treatment, using PET imaging in human subjects and transgenic techniques in mice. In particular, he is interested in adaptations of the serotonin system that occur with chronic antidepressant treatment, as well as genetic influences on susceptibility and treatment response. Neil also spent a summer at University of Tokyo, studying the influence of serotonin on spontaneous activity in the hippocampal CA3 network. In his free time, he enjoys playing, watching, and listening to music.
 

Jennifer Gristock
Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Advanced Studies in the Natural Sciences and Humanities
Research Fellow
Originally trained as a materials scientist, and specializing in second generation photovoltaics (Graetzel cells), Jenny Gristock began a dual career in science policy, science and technology studies and science communication, identifying the phenomenon of organisational virtuality (1997) and integrating public engagement, user-led innovation and innovation systems frameworks into the mediated national systems of innovation approach (mNSI, 2000). In 2001, her research on user-led innovation informed an international science policy exhibition.
In 2004 she began to investigate user or patient experiences of temporal lobe epilepsy and its diagnosis, and the application of augmented cognition systems beyond the military. Her current work applies the mediated systems of innovation approach to developments in neuroscience, particularly augmented cognition systems and cognitive enhancement. She is examining how systems of mediation, when based around new developments in neuroscience, are creating architectures of participation and exclusion, which pose particular challenges for user-led innovation and public engagement.
Gristock also researches the history of science communication. Her work on the history of science journalism featured at the 75th Anniversary conference of the British Society for the History of Science. She lives with epilepsy and has won a number of awards as a science writer.
 

Tim Hahn
GSLS Fellow
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy
Laboratory of Psychophysiology and Functional Imaging
From the very beginning of my studies in the field of psychology at the University of Marburg, Germany, it has been my wish to learn more about the processes and mechanisms which constitute and guide human behaviour. In this context, emotions with their often direct relevance for behaviour are not only of great importance, but are also of tremendous personal interest to me ever since I had the opportunity to gather first hand experience with the topic during an internship focussing on "physiological measures during interrogation" at the Hochschule für Polizei, Baden-Württemberg (Prof. Dr. Hermanutz). My curiosity was fostered further by working as a research assistant at the Department of Cognitive Psychophysiology (Prof. Dr. Rösler, University of Marburg) for two and a half years, as this provided me with valuable insights regarding theories and particularly methods in the field of Cognitive Neuroscience. Especially during my diploma thesis on electrophysiological correlates of error-processing, it became evident to me how useful physiological measures such as ERPs, fMRI, or NIRS can be in informing neuroscientific theories. Since April 2007, I am a fellow of the International Graduate School of Life Science (Würzburg, Germany), where I work in the field of functional imaging mainly focussing on the human reward system and emotional processing (supervisors: Prof. Dr. Fallgatter, Prof. Dr. Lesch, Prof. Dr. Heisenberg).
As I am strongly of the opinion that working on "closing the gap" between findings on a molecular level and evidence from cognitive psychology needs expertise from multiple disciplines and will eventually benefit all fields of neuroscience, the environment at the 2008 Monterotondo NeuroSchool appears highly promising to me.
 

Lotta Hautamaki
PhD Student
University of Helsinki
The home institution of mine is the Department of Sociology in the University of Helsinki, Finland, from where I graduated in 2006. However, I find my background to be more broadly in social sciences and humanities or human sciences, if you like. Throughout the studies, health and illness of human mind has been my main interest. My orientation stemmed first from more theoretical interests inspired especially by Michel Foucault’s and the governmentalists’ works, but very soon the subject matter itself – the interplay between normal and pathological so intriguing to biomedicine as well – became more and more important. In the Master’s thesis, I analysed Finnish depression guidance directed to laymen from 1980’s to present drawing from the ethics of Foucault and Ian Hacking’s conceptions on the interaction between science and its subjects. After graduation, I ended up taking the most educating bypath to a project concerned in the alcohol consumption of elderly people. My main task was to analyse a large qualitative interview data and report the findings, which are now being published as a book, hence this short project yielded lots of research skills and routine. As of the turn of the year, I have returned to my main subject within my PhD study titled Movements of Moods. The basic idea is to analyse how the transformations in the so called “psy” sciences – like modifications in classifications and the advances in neurosciences and pharmacological treatment – are being enforced in the Nordic welfare state of Finland. The focus will be on one of the mood disorders, bipolar disorder. The scientific understandings on bipolar disorder are being reformulated and adapted in a variety of interesting ways in different practices from research and health administration to guidance and lay discussions – these practices are the main subject of my study. The project is in the very beginning: right now I am collecting the source material, mapping relevant literature and reframing my theoretical frame.
Lotta Hautamaki's Publications

Anelis Kaiser
PhD Student
Universitat Basel
Currently, I work as a research assistant at the Gender Studies Centre (University of Basel, Switzerland), where I have been teaching Gender and Science for two years. I completed a Diploma in Psychology at the University of Basel (2001) and worked as a research assistant in a neuroscientific project about human language production (2002-2005).
During these years, I acquired experience in fMRI research, i.e. in the implementation of fMRI experiments and in fMRI data analyses. At the same time, I participated in a PhD-programme on Gender Studies (2002-2005), which focused on the social and cultural construction of gender. During this programme, I first read Foucault. From September 2005 to September 2006, I was a visiting PhD-student at BIOS, which offered me the great opportunity to familiarise with social aspects of neuroscience, considering neuroscience as part of bioscience, biomedicine and biotechnology. I just finished my PhD, the title of my dissertation being “Gender in Science - An example from fMRI language research”. In my written work, I examined neuro-empirically the similarities and differences between women and men in language production. I also conducted a critical analysis on the way of finding differences within fMRI language research.
That is how I have been working at the edge of science and social sciences. The chasm between neuroscience and social/cultural concepts is something that grabs my interest. How can we distinguish between social/cultural aspects and biological aspects of variables measured during scientific experiments? And how can we incorporate knowledge from social and historical theories into the biological laboratory without transforming the biological/biomedical sciences into social sciences?
Anelis Keiser's publications
 

Daniel Margulies
PhD Student
Max-Planck-Institut für Kognitions- und Neurowissenschaften Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
Daniel Margulies is currently a doctoral student at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain at Humboldt Universität researching how spontaneous fluctuations in brain activity, as measured with fMRI, influence variability in perception and behavior. He is also involved with the Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, collaborating on studies of neuroscience from an art history and literary perspective. Previously, he worked at the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry department at NYU in "resting-state" fMRI research, specifically studying attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. His undergraduate studies were in philosophy, French literature, and the basic sciences in Jerusalem, Paris and New York. He has recently begun using fMRI data to create video art.
 

Svenja Matusall
PhD Student
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
I am a PhD student at the Chair for Science Studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. In my PhD I am investigating how the concepts of personhood and individuality are transformed in the scope of neurobiology. My focus is on emotions and how these are discussed within a new interdisciplinary field, calling itself ‘social neuroscience’.
I grew up in Hamburg, Germany, where I also spent my first two years of university. I then moved to Hannover where I continued my studies in sociology, political sciences and history for the next four years. The focus of my studies was on gender studies, social structure, history and sociology of the body and sociology of medicine. In 2006, I completed my Magister degree with a thesis on medicalisation of childhood in the case of ADHD. While writing this thesis I got interested in how findings in neuroscience influence public perception of the self, education, society etc. To tackle these questions I thought it would be a good idea to get a better understanding of history of science and medicine, so I decided to take a MA course in history and philosophy of science and medicine at Durham University, UK. After finishing this degree with a dissertation on neuroscience and education I came to Zurich last October. Here I joined the interdisciplinary graduate school “history and philosophy of knowledge”.
When I am not working on my PhD, I play the double bass, enjoy the Swiss countryside and organise international youth workshops.
 

Liis Merenäkk
PhD Student
University of Tartu, Estonia
2002 – PhD student in neuroscience, University of Tartu, Estonia
2002 MSc in Public Health, University of Tartu, Estonia
Theses were about substance use in relation to personality traits and platelet MAO activity in schoolchildren. For these theses she received II prize in medicine in Estonian national research contest for young scientist at university level in 2002
1998 Qualification of teacher of biology and health care, University of Tartu, Estonia
1997 BSc in Biology, University of Tartu, Estonia
Liis Merenäkk has participated in two longitudinal study projects: 1) Estonian Children Personality Behaviour and Health Study and 2) Identification and Prevention of Dietary- and Lifestyle-induced health Effects in Children and Infants (EU 6th framework programme). Her main research field is biological and psychological determinants of health behaviour especially of substance use.
Liis Merenäkk's publications
 

Nicole Christine Nelson
PhD Student
Cornell University
Nicole Nelson is a doctoral candidate in the Science and Technology Studies program at Cornell University. She completed her BSc in genetics and social and political theory at the University of Western Ontario in 2004. Her dissertation project is an ethnographic study of the social processes involved in creating mouse models for studying the genetics of complex human behaviors, especially alcoholism and anxiety. She is interested in how mouse models are developed and gain credibility in the laboratory, in the behavioral genetics community, and in the larger social and institutional worlds in which behavior genetics work takes place. Nicole is currently completing her fieldwork and editing a special issue of the journal Science and Public Policy on anticipatory knowledge and the state with her advisor Stephen Hilgartner.
 

Misty Richards
Fulbright Fellow
Albany Medical College
Misty Richards is currently a 4th year MD/PhD candidate at Albany Medical College. She has completed two years of medical school basic science training and is in her second year as a graduate student in the Center for Neuroscience and Neuropharmacology. She is researching potential candidate genes involved in schizophrenia pathophysiology, specifically focusing on how such genes affect neurodevelopment. Misty is collaborating with Dr. Kunugi at the National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry (Tokyo, Japan) as well as Dr. Temple at Albany Medical College (Albany, NY) towards this aim. She feels privileged to spend the 2008-2009 academic year in Tokyo, Japan as a Fulbright Scholar and hopes to discover important candidate genes through association studies. Ultimately, Misty would like to characterize a schizophrenia-susceptibility gene from its humble beginnings all the way to behavioral function in order to dissect out critical steps in genetic expression. Moreover, in an effort to study how culture affects mental illness, she will investigate the stigma associated with schizophrenia in both the Japanese and American cultures. Misty is originally from Southern California and attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for her undergraduate degree in psychobiology. She plans on becoming a physician-scientist in the field of psychiatry/neurology upon graduation. She enjoys playing soccer in her spare time and learning about different cultures.
 

Sebastian Scharf
PhD student
Max-Planck-Institut fur Psychiatrie
I was born in a small town near Ingolstadt in Germany in 1983. Several years later, while visiting the Gymnasium with a mathematical/scientific background, my interest for the life sciences blossomed somewhere between dissecting cow eyes in an additional biology course or watching the great collection of different kinds of worms a friend of mine had in his room. After finishing school, I conducted my alternative service in a local hospital, which revealed two things for certain: First, physicians have horrible working hours and second, I did not want to learn how to treat diseases but to understand the mechanisms of these diseases and the underlying biology. So I started to study Biology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat in the wonderful city of Munich. After several years of visiting courses and seminars, I turned my attention towards a really interesting field at the Max-Planck-Institut fur Psychiatrie in Munich, researching long-term effects of chronic social stress in mice and their modulation by antidepressant treatment. As this topic grew more intruiging and interesting every day, I started my PhD project in April this year, continuing my work from the diploma thesis. So this is the story of my scientific career up until now, including its humble beginnings. One funny detail remains to be said: interest in natural sciences seems not to be influenced by genetic predisposition in any way, as no other member of my family (which is really big) seems to be interested in natural sciences at all.

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