Adventures from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
As a kid you probably found some decisions by your parents utterly unjust. Perhaps you proclaimed, “That’s not fair!” when you were forced to eat spinach, or if your sibling got something you didn’t. As adults, we still experience intense sensations of injustice, sometimes in response to more serious issues such as human rights, health(...)
The Department of Neuroeconomics and Neuromarketing sounds like a title chiseled on the wall of a corporate division in a dystopian future; the highlight of a consumerism episode of Black Mirror. But Dino Levy, a researcher in this seemingly dystopian department at Tel Aviv University, was quick to readjust our preconceived notions of what his lab studies(...)
You are on a roll. In the morning, you delivered a compelling business proposal. You were the center of attention at lunch and your colleagues loved your witty remarks. In the afternoon meeting, you stood your ground and brilliantly defended your case with irrefutable arguments. When it’s your day, you feel invincible. What gives you(...)
Is parabiosis the new fountain of youth? Parabiosis, meaning “living beside,” is a 150-year-old surgical technique that unites the blood vessels of two living animals. One of the earliest accounts of parabiosis comes from the mid-1800s when a French zoologist, Paul Bert, attached the circulatory systems of two animals and demonstrated that fluid injected into(...)
At the proverbial watercooler in teaching hospitals across the world, one hears remarkably similar refrains: “This patient is back again,” “I have no idea why my experiment failed this time” and, most universally, “I’ve only slept three hours in the past two days!” Medical trainees often view sleep deprivation as a badge of honor, one(...)
The Johns Hopkins Hospital can be a labyrinth to anyone unaccustomed to its many hallways, towers and tunnels. To navigate through such a complex space, special neural networks are activated to help us find our way. Specifically, a cortical map of neurons, made up of so-called grid cells, fire in specific regions of the brain(...)
The following submission is the first place winner of The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation 2016 essay contest. You can read the original posting here. Modern medicine has worked miracles: we have cured infectious diseases with vaccines, replaced failing organs with transplants, converted many cancers from death sentences into treatable conditions. But one area has(...)
If you’ve been interested in learning a second language or already speak more than one language, the concept of “bilingual advantage” may pique your interest. Many would agree that speaking more than one language helps us to more broadly communicate but it may also offer cognitive advantages in executive function (processes such as task flexibility,(...)
Jonathan Grima, a third-year neuroscience graduate student and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow working in the labs of Jeffrey Rothstein and Solomon Snyder, was recently named the winner of an international scholarship competition hosted by the human cell culture company Axol. The scholarship application was a test of effective science communication skills. Applicants were(...)
I remember the day I first met Carolina Montano, a fellow student in the Johns Hopkins M.D./Ph.D. program. It was toward the beginning of my first year in medical school. We were both at a dinner for M.D./Ph.D. interviewees, and, as with many conversations between medical students, we inevitably began to discuss our classes. Carolina(...)