STARKVILLE – When Zoe Ishee first started out as a Mississippi State University student in 2021, she didn’t know much about neuroscience, but she knew she wanted to learn more about how the brain functions.
The only problem was, as Ishee searched the university’s websites for anything related to neuroscience, she couldn’t find anything except one lab-based class with the word in the name.
Ishee’s search for information on the brain eventually led her to create the Neuroscience Club – which has now partially inspired the university’s new neuroscience minor.
“I’ve always been interested in the brain specifically – the mind and the brain,” Ishee told The Dispatch on Thursday. “… So when I came here, I was just willy nilly looking for anything brain. And I guess I just fell into that path, and I found exactly what I was looking for.”
Neuroscience is the study of the structure or function of the nervous system and brain, seeking to understand the biological basis of behavior, thought and emotion. It includes the study of the system’s development and degeneration.
After the Perception and Cognitive Neuroscience lab, taught by MSU Associate Professor Michael Pratte, Ishee realized she still had a lot more she could learn from her fellow students in the room. She wanted to make a hub for all things neuroscience at the university, and Ishee asked a few other students if they wanted to found a club with Pratte as their adviser.
By January 2023, Ishee and her friends held an interest meeting, not knowing how many people would show up, or how fast the club would grow.
“They were coming from all kinds of stuff like computer science, and stuff that I didn’t realize was so intertwined with neuroscience,” Ishee said.
During club meetings, members would present research they did on specific topics the group had chosen, like optogenetics – a biological technique using light to control the movement of cells, particularly neurons.
The Neuroscience Club also held two sheep brain dissection days, Ishee said, along with a day to examine brain cells under a microscope.
“That was one of the opportunities that I was itching for someone to provide me, because I’m not a bio student, directly,” she said. “So I was like, ‘I would love if a random person, like an art major, could show up and have this really awesome science experience.’”
Along the way, Ishee said, she would ask her professor about what classes to take next, so she could find neuroscience-related information. But behind the scenes, she said, professors noticed the amount of interest students were showing in neuroscience.
From a club to a minor
Interim Associate Department Head for Computer Science and Engineering J. Adam Jones is the new minor’s adviser. He said when he came to the university in 2021, he started meeting other professors with research overlapping in the field of neuroscience.
Those faculty members were talking behind the scenes, as students across their disciplines were meeting in the club, which had more than 100 members at the time, Jones said.
“Every one of the people we talked to have enthusiastic students in their field, in their major, coming to them wanting to do research and learn more in sort of a hands-on way about how neuroscience interacts with their discipline,” Jones said.
Jones said the professors eventually realized there was enough expertise across the campus to give students a formal education in neuroscience topics, specifically neuroscience applied across disciplines. That led to the creation of the new Applied Neuroscience minor, which will be available on the campus in August.
The Applied Science minor will include 18 hours of coursework from a pool of classes distributed across three colleges and eight different departments, including Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Biochemistry, Health and Nutrition, Biological Sciences, Computer Science and Engineering, Kinesiology, Philosophy and Religion, Poultry Science and Psychology.
Any student from any declared major can pursue the minor, according to information available in the university’s course catalog. Jones said the flexible minor will help students customize the depth of their neuroscience experience, helping them to work toward future educational and career goals.
“It’s very encouraging and very exhilarating to see people being interested in this and starting this new program here at Mississippi State, especially since when I was a student, this kind of crossover was less common,” Jones said.
Jones said the minor could be helpful for students wanting to get into graduate programs with specializations in neuroscience, which now has applications in things like artificial intelligence and other developing technologies.
“I think since neuroscience is really finding its way into these new areas, that it’s making new job opportunities for people,” Jones said. “And having the opportunity to get in on that early in the existence of these new fields is going to give students here in Mississippi an advantage.”
Ishee said she was excited to see future students at MSU find a direct path to the subject that initially fascinated her.
“It feels really exciting, not for me, but for the future of kids that were like me that came here and were like, ‘what can I do in neuroscience?’ And now, they can get a solid thing on their resume that says that,” Ishee said.
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