From Juvenile Detention to Neuroscience

Raul Ramos

Raul Ramos shared his inspiring personal journey into science with high school students from Waltham High School as part of the series, The Brandeis MRSEC and WHS present: Science Pizza Talks. AAAS provided additional support for this event.

Transcript (YouTube) 

00:04
so I am a mexican-american neuroscience
00:09
PhD student at Brandeis University I
00:12
feel very fortunate to be there because
00:15
Brandeis is neuroscience graduate
00:17
program as among the highest ranking in
00:20
the nation but I wasn’t always so
00:23
fortunate and today I’m going to talk
00:25
about the journey that has brought me
00:27
here and I want to start by asking me
00:30
and how many of you are seniors or
00:32
juniors
00:34
so a lot of upperclassmen right and
00:36
graduation isn’t too far away right and
00:40
it’s an exciting time but it’s also a
00:43
time of uncertainty right it can be
00:45
really intimidating and I’ve been in
00:48
those shoes I know what that feels like
00:51
especially if you’re interested in
00:52
science some of you may have already
00:55
exposed to the have been exposed to the
00:58
misconception that becoming a
01:00
is impossibly difficult I like to call
01:04
it the science is hard gossip
01:06
you’ll hear people tell you things like
01:08
that’s just too much information to
01:11
memorize or they might ask you or you’re
01:14
even good at math you might find
01:16
yourself thinking but it’s something you
01:18
can never learn or maybe you don’t do so
01:21
well in your high school science classes
01:23
and you get to college and think that a
01:26
science major is not an option
01:28
my hope today is that my story will help
01:31
dispel some of these misconceptions and
01:34
give all of you some insight on what a
01:36
path into science can look like and then
01:39
at the end I’ll briefly talk about some
01:41
of the work that I’m doing now at
01:43
Brandeis University so we’re gonna
01:46
backtrack a little I was born and raised
01:48
in the river of Texas by the time I was
01:51
14 years old I had been in and out of
01:54
juvenile detention three times I had
01:56
been expelled from the entire public
01:59
school district and a lot of people have
02:01
given
02:02
I was an underachieving student when I
02:05
got expelled and many of my teachers
02:07
would have told you that I was a lost
02:09
cause
02:09
at the time my parents were the only
02:12
advocates I had that but I was too young
02:14
and I was too stubborn to realize them
02:17
there was a period in which I didn’t
02:19
attend school but eventually I was
02:22
enrolled into a private high school and
02:24
it was the only school in the entire
02:27
city that were taken it was either that
02:29
or military school during my time at
02:33
Power Christian Academy my high school I
02:36
took creationism biology
02:38
I dropped physics and I dropped
02:40
chemistry because they were too
02:42
intimidating for me how was it it wasn’t
02:44
ready to take those classes and as
02:48
graduation approached I I didn’t know
02:51
what I wanted to do I had a strong
02:53
community that I didn’t want to go to
02:55
college I signed up for the SAT and I
02:59
took it
03:00
I support the no average as a matter of
03:03
fact I scored 100 points lower than the
03:06
average here at Walt that much I started
03:09
my
03:12
studies taking developmental math that’s
03:15
a math class for students considered to
03:17
have mad skills window of the standard
03:19
college level but while I was taking
03:21
that math class I was also taking a
03:23
sociology class and that’s where the
03:26
peers began to turn it was a really
03:28
challenging class but it became
03:30
interesting I started to pay attention
03:33
and I started to think that maybe maybe
03:37
higher education could be the right
03:39
thing for me the midterm exam for that
03:41
class came around and everyone building
03:45
the professor was it was a shock because
03:47
he had to give a retest and this was the
03:51
only time in my entire five and a half
03:53
years as an undergraduate that a
03:55
professor gave a retest but it was the
03:58
second chance that I needed and I didn’t
04:00
know it but my life was about to change
04:02
I decided that I was going to pass the
04:05
test
04:05
that I was going to put in the work so I
04:07
began to read and I began to study I
04:10
developed little techniques like color
04:12
coded highlighted yellow forty turns
04:15
orange four concepts blue for important
04:18
people and paying for stuff that I
04:19
thought was cool right the exact came
04:22
around and I passed it with the highest
04:24
grade in the class and it felt good I
04:27
realized that I was learning really
04:29
interesting
04:30
so I set a goal said I’m gonna finish
04:34
with the highest final grade in the
04:36
class and this mentality felt awesome
04:38
it started to spill into my other
04:40
classes it was the middle of the
04:42
semester and I was behind but I got
04:45
organized and I began to study day and
04:47
day and then I did it I finished
04:51
sociology with the highest grade of the
04:54
class out of a hundred and something
04:55
students I went to go speak to the
04:57
professor after rain for out and he
05:00
asked me what did you major in
05:03
where you going to study and at the time
05:04
I was undeclared I didn’t know it’s my
05:06
first semester so I told him I’m not
05:09
sure yet
05:10
and he said any field would be lucky to
05:13
have you and that was the first time
05:16
that a teacher that a mentor a scientist
05:20
but even then was dr. marcozzi novice
05:24
and I’ll never forget that conversation
05:25
with class food there was that first
05:29
spark but then it became up to me too
05:32
bad those flames I began to take my
05:35
education a lot more seriously but I
05:38
still had no idea what I wanted to study
05:40
I would end up changing my major several
05:43
times every day I woke up wanting to be
05:46
they different but then I began to do
05:48
something that’s going to be critical in
05:50
all the girls lives for helping defining
05:53
I began to volunteer and to take on
05:56
internships I started volunteering for
05:58
professors at the University and at
06:01
first it was doing really simple things
06:03
like inputting numbers onto a computer
06:05
just number crunching numbers from
06:08
surveys that they would hand out to
06:09
other students and sit there the state
06:11
of music and putting that data but as
06:14
time went on I became increasingly
06:16
involved in projects and I didn’t even
06:19
realize that happening because I was
06:21
enjoying what I was doing I was focused
06:24
on the journey and not all on the
06:27
destination I had forgotten that I
06:29
wasn’t good at math I had forgotten how
06:32
terribly I did in school before college
06:34
I had stopped thinking I’m a science
06:37
career that’s something that was
06:39
unattainable eventually I applied to an
06:43
REU at Brandeis University
06:46
that’s natural research experience for
06:48
undergraduates they paid for me to fly
06:51
from Texas to Brandeis and to spend the
06:54
duration of the summer during research
06:56
it was during that summer that I was
06:59
placed in a narrow
07:00
laughs and I had finally found right fit
07:03
I realized that I was passionate about
07:06
the work and that I enjoyed it and not
07:08
only that til this day it doesn’t feel
07:11
like work to me and it’s because of
07:13
these experiences in life that I’m now
07:16
scientists at Brandeis that gets to
07:18
study how our brain and the cells in our
07:21
brain change in order to enable us to
07:24
learn and maintain stable learning over
07:26
time and the type of learning that I
07:29
study it’s something that you all might
07:31
have first-hand experience with how many
07:35
of you have ever been food poisoning you
07:38
need something
07:39
it’s gross that’s just sick and you
07:42
don’t forget what made you sick right
07:44
and the idea of consuming whatever made
07:48
you sick again it’s 100 percent off
07:50
pudding right and so this phenomenon
07:54
this type of learning is called position
07:57
taste aversion and we can replicate it
07:59
in the lab if we take something like a
08:01
taste it
08:02
let’s say sugar water and we give it to
08:05
a rack and the rack has a positive
08:07
experience this is a happy right the
08:10
next time it encounters that tasting
08:12
it’s going to really like it but if we
08:16
take a similar scenario and we have a
08:19
rack that instead experiences stomach
08:22
sickness then the next time it
08:25
encounters that taste it it’s going to
08:27
want nothing to do with it and this is
08:31
conditioned taste aversion and thanks to
08:33
the work of many great scientists we now
08:36
know that this type of learning takes
08:39
place in an area of the brain known as
08:41
taste for its scent so we have here it’s
08:44
little dark but we have a slice of red
08:47
brick the brick the red cells are
08:49
labeled in blue and in green we have
08:52
taste cortex and we now know that
08:55
information information about taste and
08:58
information about stomach sickness come
09:00
together and taste quartzite and that’s
09:02
where this connection is made and this
09:04
type of learning takes place now I’m
09:07
studying how the single neurons single
09:10
brain cells in taste cortex how these
09:14
neurons change at the cellular level to
09:17
allow for this learning to happen and
09:19
what are some of the properties of these
09:23
cells that enable this type it’s a very
09:26
unique type of learning
09:29
so if you take anything from this talk I
09:34
want to say that if you’ve ever
09:36
dismissed the idea of becoming of a
09:39
career in science I want to invite you
09:41
to think again because you don’t have to
09:44
be the next Einstein that watch the
09:46
earth I’m not all you have to do is be
09:50
curious and be interested and quite
09:52
something that you want to learn more
09:54
about and I want to leave you with two
09:57
pieces of information to hopefully keep
09:59
your interest the verse is that science
10:02
careers are considered some of the most
10:05
stressed I pay careers but not only that
10:08
I have the two wet out of all the things
10:11
you could study a PhD in and this is not
10:14
a curative medical school this is not
10:15
including a master’s degree but out of
10:17
all the fields you can study for your
10:19
PhD 18 out of the top 20 highest-paid
10:23
are science careers and with that I’d be
10:29
happy to take any questions
10:40
feel free to ask me about anything
10:52
I’m part of the Therese Jana so Jia Jia
10:56
no it’s in one of the science centers
10:59
there so we have several science
11:00
buildings at Brandeis she is so in her
11:05
lab we study have how experience
11:08
dependent and changes in the brain so
11:11
you have to when you experience things
11:12
our brain changes in response to that
11:15
and that’s how we learn and her lab
11:17
studies have those brain cells change in
11:19
order to accommodate its learning but
11:21
not only that if you think about it your
11:23
brain is always changing how does that
11:25
maintain stable over time how do we not
11:28
lose information how are we how are we
11:30
able to keep it together for lack of a
11:33
better word and so that’s a very
11:35
interesting problem right now in our
11:37
science the fact that our brain is so
11:39
dynamic and yet it’s so reliable
11:46
yeah so I started off one day Claire and
11:49
then I started off and then I went into
11:52
psychology and then I realized that I
11:54
didn’t want to do psychology and so I
11:56
did biology and then while I was reading
11:58
biology I fell in love with chemistry
12:00
Robert I I didn’t do chemistry in high
12:03
school I actually dropped it the first
12:05
time again in college because I had a
12:07
professor who wasn’t doing a good job of
12:09
explaining the material and eventually
12:12
made my third time trying to get into
12:15
chemistry it was with a really good
12:17
professor and I actually fell in love
12:19
with it and started taking a bunch of
12:21
chemistry classes and so I ended up
12:24
graduating with a psychology major with
12:27
a biology minor but I had more bio
12:29
classes and more chemistry classes that
12:31
I needed for for anything so it was
12:33
almost like I was triple majoring but
12:36
what I was actually doing was I was just
12:38
taking classes that I was interested in
12:40
whatever I whatever sounded like
12:42
something I like I wasn’t worried about
12:44
what degree I was gonna get I was just
12:47
more interested in learning things that
12:49
I wanted to learn about and that
12:52
happened to translate into neuroscience
12:54
because it’s a very special field of
12:57
science that combines psychology and
13:00
biology and chemistry physics computer
13:03
science it’s awesome there’s a place for
13:06
everybody
13:20
it’s a little fuzzy but I think that we
13:28
might have a book that we had might have
13:31
touched based on it and been like yeah
13:33
that’s one theory but like alternatively
13:35
there’s this although I will say that
13:41
that my high school science teacher she
13:45
had gotten her master’s in biology and
13:47
although she was religious science and
13:51
religion can coexist
13:52
and so she was able to kind of teach to
13:56
kind of bring elements of golf into the
13:58
class and it was actually a class that I
14:01
enjoyed a lot so so yeah I don’t
14:07
remember exactly all the things that we
14:09
might have covered but I know that I
14:11
came into college with a very weak stand
14:14
background absolutely no idea what the
14:17
only reason I took that sociology class
14:18
was because there was required
14:28
so I’ve recently been doing a lot of
14:31
programming that some of you are
14:35
familiar with it it’s simple it’s simple
14:38
algebra simple rhythmic arithmetic but I
14:41
ended up getting all the way as an
14:44
undergrad I ended up taking calculus and
14:46
passing it with an A because of YouTube
14:50
YouTube is an awesome resource by the
14:53
way whenever whenever you need a quick
14:57
tutor YouTube and so I will say that I
15:02
had rounded out my math skills but I do
15:06
wish that I would have a stronger
15:08
opportunity to experience that when I
15:12
was younger because I felt like I played
15:14
catch-up for a lot of my life
15:22
so I love like everything about it
15:25
because I think it’s pretty cool if you
15:27
think about it I feel like I kind of
15:30
feel like I never grew up I just started
15:32
now when I was young I played I like to
15:34
know like all the things I like to play
15:36
with toys and stuff like that now I feel
15:38
like I’m getting paid to play with adult
15:41
toys like I could walk into work and I
15:43
have access to some users $12,000
15:46
microscopes I get to image brains both
15:50
that brain slice and those individual
15:51
cells are all pictures I took and I took
15:53
them for fun it’s just it’s pretty
15:58
awesome
15:59
like I don’t feel like I’m working I
16:01
interact with other people who shared
16:04
this interest every day and it’s just
16:07
such an awesome environment to be in
16:08
because growing up growing up through
16:11
college what I did become interested in
16:14
science I had no science friends none of
16:16
my friends are interested in none of my
16:18
friends were interested in science it’s
16:19
okay they were pursuing other careers of
16:21
their own but I never knew what it would
16:23
be like to be around people who were
16:25
interested in the same stuff and it’s
16:27
pretty cool it’s just like hey you got
16:29
to do an Acer mine we’ll try it out
16:38
it’s very it can be competitive and
16:41
that’s scary but at the same time for me
16:47
comic competition really pushes me to
16:50
like work hard
16:57
computer science the encoding is awesome
17:00
I didn’t know how to code at all until
17:04
last semester I decided that it was time
17:06
that I learned and that things are
17:09
heading into a direction we’re quoting
17:10
this encoding and the ability code is
17:13
very important and so I took a class and
17:15
now I’m very comfortable my classes will
17:18
be important no matter how old you get
17:20
I’m so have there any benefits from that
17:23
environment so I’m not much about okay
17:25
again I’m not much of a self learner
17:27
sometimes I really benefit from like
17:29
instruction and so I learned to code and
17:31
if I could go back I would do computer
17:33
science
17:38
research I am interested although it’s
17:43
still open
17:45
I’m interested in something called
17:48
science consulting and I’m really
17:50
interested in pursuing that but I I
17:53
haven’t really got enough first-hand
17:55
experience with it so that could change
18:03
I don’t know exactly when it was figured
18:06
out that it happens in gustatory cortex
18:08
you look familiar
18:12
were you in such as well yeah yeah so I
18:21
don’t know when it was confirmed that it
18:23
happens in fest to Tory cortex with the
18:25
phenomenon itself was discovered in the
18:27
60s by someone doing completely
18:30
different research so the picture I
18:31
showed of this man John Garcia he’s
18:36
really inspirational if you look up his
18:38
obituary and like really hit home but he
18:42
was working on radiation research and he
18:46
noticed that rats would not drink to
18:49
walk would not drink water from the
18:51
water bottles in their radiation testing
18:53
chambers and they were plastic water
18:56
bottles and the ones that they had in
18:57
their cage were glass and he
18:59
hypothesized that maybe the plastic was
19:02
giving them a taste that they could
19:03
recognize and that coupled with the
19:06
sickness were making was making them
19:08
avoid that specific water and so he
19:11
tested it by adding flavor to the water
19:13
so that way he could be sure that the
19:15
rats could recognize it and controlling
19:17
for the bottles
19:18
and he and that like he was doing
19:20
something a little different but he
19:21
noticed something that no was something
19:23
so simple that no one had ever noticed
19:25
before and he went on to testify before
19:29
Congress about the dangers of radiation
19:33
in a time where the government was very
19:36
Pro nuclear and this and we still didn’t
19:40
know a lot about this
19:42
it’s really amazing it shows that all
19:44
you have to do is just be curious right
19:46
and you never know what you’re going to
19:48
smell both one
19:53
I was saying that I like Google to
19:57
school and maybe like you know I will
20:01
say that sometimes I do think like hot
20:07
you know if I think back I can make
20:11
y’all have to go

Cover image is from Pixabay | CC0 Creative Commons