Joe Kojima, SEAS ’27, Tokyo, Japan
Having the opportunity to work over the summer at the Bio-Intelligent Systems Laboratory at the University of Tokyo, I found myself surrounded from beginning to end by innovative research. The lab had brain organoids, racks of computers, and rats (with chips in their brains) all in one place, creating a surreal environment unlike anything I had ever experienced. This unique combination of technology and biology is what got me interested here in the first place, but it still took me by surprise.
I was placed in a team that was trying to solve a simple question. Why do we like music? Combining computational neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and music, proving the answer was a challenge. It was hypothesized that the neural pathways activated by music might have evolutionary roots shared with other mammals, which led us to our little research subjects – rats. There, I learned to make and implement a model that creates a 3D pose estimation of rats from multiple videos, to prove they are “dancing to the music”. This task and the experiment itself were far more tedious and complex than I thought, involving complex coding, careful calibration of multiple cameras, and extensive data processing. So, there I was, sometimes six days a week, in the underground lab from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., handling rats, DJing for them, gathering data, and analyzing it all. It was demanding, but the friendliness of the other lab members and the excitement of potentially groundbreaking research kept me going.
Looking back, these three months felt like an instant. There was so much to learn, so many intriguing questions as I converse with the other researchers at the lab, that we would often go multiple hours just talking/hypothesizing, such as why 40Hz neural stimulation was effective for Alzheimer’s, or why we preferred to listen to Stereo music over Mono. The experience has solidified my passion for neuroscience and opened my eyes to the interdisciplinary, and fun nature of scientific inquiry. I am glad I was able to work for this lab over the summer and thank Career Services for making it possible for me.
This is part of a series of posts by recipients of the 2024 Career Services Summer Funding Grant. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they spent their summer. You can read the entire series here
