Meeting researchers who enthusiastically shared their work and welcomed questions showed me the kind of researcher I hope to become!

While I was fascinated by the many mysteries about the brain, where memories are stored, what happens when we learn, and more, I had never clearly articulated what answers I was ultimately looking for, or what question, once answered, would make me feel that I had really understood the brain. One lecture that particularly stayed with me was Dr. Shibata’s on behavioral methods. His discussion of Marr’s levels of analysis and the idea that understanding is inherently pluralistic gave me an important framework for thinking about neuroscience.
For example, to understand learning, it is not enough to know only how learning is implemented in the brain. We can also ask what computations are being performed and why such mechanisms evolved. These complementary perspectives together create a rich understanding. What I found especially thought-provoking was the idea that understanding cognition requires more than neuroscientific measurements alone, with behavioral methods providing a way to reveal functional principles underlying cognition.
This helped me understand why I am particularly drawn to studying the human brain through behavioral experiments and computational approaches. I am fascinated by a system: given certain inputs, what outputs emerge, and what internal processes connect the two. More broadly, BSTP showed me what a pluralistic understanding of the brain looks like in practice. Through lectures spanning research from zebrafish to the human brain, and from molecular mechanisms to theoretical models, I saw how researchers tackle the fundamental questions from different levels of explanation. BSTP not only deepened my understanding of neuroscience but also helped me better understand my own research interests and strengthened my motivation to pursue them.