SINGING IN THE BRAIN Michael Long ʼ97 Assistant Professor of Neuroscience New York University Medical Center Michael Long was one of those students who loved Neuroscience so much when it wasn’t yet part of the Rhodes curriculum that he earned two degrees, a B.S. in Biology and B.A. in Psychology. After Rhodes, he got his Ph.D. at Brown and did a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT. For the past 2½ years, he has been an assistant professor of Neuroscience at the New York University Medical Center, where he directs a team of researchers in addition to teaching courses. In his lab, Long and his research team study how groups of brain cells work together to produce skilled behaviors. They make many of their observations from an unlikely source—a tiny Australian songbird called a zebra finch. Long and colleagues use cutting-edge experimental techniques, many developed in Long’s lab, in order to determine “how all the cells in the songbirds’ brains work together to make that song happen.” Michael Long ’97 Songbirds, like humans, have to learn their vocalizations, Long says. “A young songbird will listen to a tutor, often its father, early on. Even with limited exposure to that song, the bird will remember and start practicing it.” After countless practice attempts over the first few months of its life, the bird will be able to sing. In the Long lab, while the bird is singing, scientists monitor and manipulate the activity of the bird’s brain cells with small devices that can be harmlessly mounted to the bird’s head in the forebrain area, Long explains. “We can peer into the electrical activity of single neurons while this bird is singing.” From these recordings, he gains insight into what underlies the production of the song and, more broadly, can
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begin to unravel how other skilled behaviors may be produced. To determine what brain regions are relevant for further study, Long and colleagues developed a simple method for pinpointing the areas responsible for creating these behaviors. “We can manipulate the temperature of the nucleus, drop the temperature by a few degrees in this area, but leave the rest of the brain completely unaltered. When we do this, the bird sings in slow motion.” The research has direct application for humans. Long has teamed up with a group of neurosurgeons at the University of Iowa, for whom he has built a similar device that is used in the operating room. “In surgery, the doctors want to find any area of the brain that is involved in higher level motor function, like speech, so as not to damage it during a procedure. The current methods of intraoperative brain mapping carry a certain degree of risk. I proposed using a cooling probe that a surgeon can march around different areas of the brain while the patient is awake and talking. If you’re over a speech-related area you can hear a person’s speech slow down. Now you can safely identify these areas and be careful to leave those alone. This technique has already been used in a cohort of patients with extremely encouraging results.” Long had mentors in the area of Neuroscience. At Rhodes, “Robert Strandburg in Psychology was a major mentor and inspiration, and he continues to be. He taught me everything I needed to know to fall in love with this field. Biology professor Jay Blundon, now at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, was another important mentor.” While at Rhodes, Long’s love of research sparked an idea—a science symposium for students. With college and faculty support, especially from professors Strandburg and Natalie Person, Long founded URCAS—the annual Undergraduate Research and Creative Arts Symposium. The first year saw 30 student
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