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What is the future of interdisciplinary brain science? Perspectives from early-career scholars

  • Writer: Website Tech
    Website Tech
  • 3 days ago
  • 6 min read

Interview and writing by: Chinmayi Balusu

Edited by: Ayush Halder and Fahad Hassan Shah



The real-world applications of psychology and neuroscience have expanded rapidly in recent years. Whether it be economics, policy, technology, or the arts, the traditional boundaries are blurring beneficially, intertwining the sciences and humanities to form cohesive narratives and provide valuable, innovative insights. A few years ago, I had the honor of interviewing three students who are pursuing their curiosity about the brain through an interdisciplinary lens. Their collective reflections offer insight into the question: What could be the future implications of neuroscience and psychology if the fields were to fully enable interdisciplinary approaches?


Early interests in the brain


As part of an immigrant family in Vancouver, Canada, my first interviewee, Brandon Zhou, grew up speaking Cantonese with his family and English outside the home. His experiences inspired him to enroll in language courses as an undergraduate student at Dartmouth College, where he developed a passion for the patterning, structure, and construction of language. Over the years, he has explored topics such as the intersection of language and memory, as well as the use of brain scanning technologies, such as fMRI and EEG, to analyze how we process and learn second languages, which formed the groundwork for his research thesis as well. In 2022, he graduated from Dartmouth with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Government & Linguistics, alongside a modified Neuroscience major with High Honors.


For U.S. West Coast-based Natalya Braxton, her interest in the brain stemmed from a psychology case encounter during a pre-health high school summer program at the University of Washington. Natalya was fascinated by the patient actor’s portrayal of a child experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms, especially as she had not had prior exposure to the psychology realm as a young student. Later in high school, she pursued a neuroscience laboratory research experience at Stanford University and recalls being fascinated by how specific changes in the brain correspond to our behavior, including experiences of mental illness. 


As a student at Pomona College in Claremont, California, Natalya stumbled across a webpage with information about the Bachelor of Arts program in Public Policy Analysis one day. While she had not extensively considered a career in government or politics at that point, the real-world application aspect of the program appealed to her. Natalya appealed to pursue the Public Policy Analysis program with a concentration in Neuroscience, allowing her to dive deeper into her interests in the accessibility and availability of mental health services, both in clinical spaces and non-clinical spaces such as school settings.


My third interviewee, Jiwon Elizabeth Im, was based in America's East Coast at the time, wrapping up her Bachelor of Arts degree in Cognitive Science, as well as a minor in Medicine, Science, and Humanities, at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. In her early years, Elizabeth thought she would focus on English literature during her higher education pursuits. While taking an “Introduction to Psychology” course in college, Elizabeth was intrigued by the intersection of science and humanities fields—especially when thinking about how people interact with one another in society. As a cognitive science student, Elizabeth had taken courses from 20+ departments on campus over the last few years! Whether it is computer science, philosophy, linguistics, or anthropology, Elizabeth’s pursuits of brain connections in the classroom or through student organizations such as Omega Psi (the undergraduate society for cognitive science) have connected her with a community of like-minded peers, who fuel her passion to explore even further.


The need for interdisciplinary brain science


A uniting parallel across all three interviewees’ reflections was the urgent need for open conversations and meaningful interactions across disciplines, sectors, and industries. 


Earlier, Elizabeth participated in a year-long course series applying cognitive neuroscience to artificial intelligence. One of the covered topics related to the regulation of emerging neuro- and bio-technologies, such as facial recognition, which is banned in some countries. It illustrates the need for direct conversations between researchers or technology innovators and policymakers, avoiding tunnel vision as well as uncertain lags between technology introduction and approval.


Additionally, Elizabeth’s experience as a volunteer with the Johns Hopkins Tutorial Project and Natalya’s clinical summer internship through the Child Mind Institute also illustrate the importance of in-person, hands-on connections with the community members impacted by our interdisciplinary work. Elizabeth was able to build connections with younger children from underserved communities in Baltimore, understanding their needs and applying the perspective in research studies of developmental dysgraphia among pediatric populations. Similarly, Natalya’s insight from participating as a therapeutic counselor for children with selective mutism translated to presenting independent research within the clinic on trauma-informed schooling practices to the Child Mind Institute.

Furthermore, Brandon’s undergraduate degree programs may not have seemed related on paper, yet their influences on people’s lives are closely intertwined. The intersection of neurolinguistics allows for an understanding of the process by which people learn second languages. The government lens allows for exploring how policy can support individuals as they adopt second languages, especially among immigrant communities, as an example. To Brandon, interdisciplinary means having different fields come together to create a “better” output or experience for communities, in some way, shape, or form. An analogy that stood out from our conversation was that in addition to bringing people from diverse professional backgrounds around a roundtable, we also need to foster conversations between one another around and outside of that table.


How do we build the future of interdisciplinary psychology and neuroscience?


In addition to these themes, for students who are thinking about pursuing a career in academia, a question that is at the top of their minds is: what kind of university or institution department might they end up being a part of? Rather than having to worry about how a principal investigator's topics fit into a department's structure or match a specific grant's requirements, Brandon believes the future of interdisciplinary academia should be flexible and centered on experiences rather than checkboxes to gauge fit. Currently, a dedicated institution, such as a “Department of Immigrant Lived Experiences,” does not exist for students such as Brandon to collaborate with. However, he hopes to start out with understanding second language acquisition in the context of immigration, and perhaps expand in the future to understand neurolinguistics’ connections with immigration law or the sociological experiences of immigrants. Being able to have consistent conversations about methods, findings, best practices, and lessons learned from within and across “departments” may change the course of interdisciplinary interactions.


On another note, all three interviewees firmly believe that current students and early-career scholars are leading the way in shaping the future of interdisciplinary sciences. However, they emphasized that near-peer and faculty mentorship, along with strong institutional support, are instrumental in making this progress possible. Natalya was one of the very few Public Policy Analysis students at Pomona with a focus on neuroscience. For Brandon, the most recent Government and Linguistics student who also had a background in neuroscience had graduated several years prior to his time. As a result, Natalya, Brandon, and other students in niche brain-related undergraduate degree programs often charted out their course of study and extracurricular involvements independently, by taking the initiative to seek out faculty mentors or collaborate with fellow peers.


It is also important to consider that the ability of students and graduates to explore interdisciplinary pursuits early on in their education or career varies from university to university and country to country. At private colleges and universities such as Pomona, Hopkins, and Dartmouth, undergraduate students may have increased access to diverse curricular, research, and mentorship opportunities compared to students at public institutions. Furthermore, not all colleges or universities allow students to customize or design their programs of study. Lastly, it is important to note global disparities in access to interdisciplinary learning opportunities, as educational institutions in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) outside of North America and Europe may not have the bandwidth to offer formal psychology or neuroscience degree programs at the undergraduate level, shifting the onus to the students themselves to refine their interests individually with limited resources and faculty bandwidth. 


Takeaways


Overall, the movement toward interdisciplinary brain science is rapidly gaining momentum, and students and early-career scholars such as Elizabeth, Natalya, and Brandon will certainly be leading the next generation’s efforts. Participating in cross-disciplinary conversations and initiatives, as well as amplifying the voices of early-career scholars, can help challenge the status quo and shape the interdisciplinary futures of the psychology and neuroscience fields.


Learn more about Brandon, Natalya, and Elizabeth’s current work by visiting their respective LinkedIn pages below.




 
 
 
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