Mayumi Watanabe
Research Associates, Laboratory for the Neural Circuitry of Learning and Memory

Lab visit

I visited several system neuroscience labs with guidance from volunteer PhD students. Visits to each lab were limited to 30 minutes, but it was quite well organized and a great opportunity to talk with people in person and feel the culture of each lab. I was able to observe the core facilities and lab-unique experimental setups and learn about their experiments and techniques. It was also fun to communicate with lab members and discuss each other’s research and recent findings in the field. Besides the lab visits, we had lunch with neuroscience PhD students and casually chatted about science, as well as about daily life in both UCSF and RIKEN.

Poster session

The poster session took place on the first night of the UCSF neuroscience retreat. It covered a wide range of neuroscience topics including developmental, system, and disease studies. I presented a poster entitled “Prefrontal subregions bidirectionally control fear extinction learning through projections to the locus coeruleus,” which demonstrated top-down prefrontal regulation of emotional learning through differential innervation of the brainstem noradrenergic system by combining anatomical, optogenetic and fiber photometry approaches. I enjoyed having discussions with my audience, as well as listening to a variety of posters in a cozy and casual setting, accompanied with drinks and snacks.

How will the experiences in the program pay off for your science career?

It was an exciting experience to take a look at a different research environment. The most attractive feature of this program was allowing me to jump into the UCSF neuroscience community by taking part in their three-day retreat. I had much time to interact with people and we talked on random topics ranging from daily life to career options rather than only science. I believe that this was a quite rare chance to listen to the real voices of other scientists.

Though I found much similarity between UCSF neuroscience labs and RIKEN CBS, such as our broad range of neuroscience subfields, open interaction, and active collaborations between labs, but the roles of PhD students in UCSF seemed very unique. They build strong bonds during the course work period and keep good friendships after they join labs, which seemed to be a key to maintaining active communication between labs beyond the research interest. Students also play an essential role in management of the graduate program to improve their environment. During the retreat, they hold a session called “DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) session” and discussed how to enhance diversity (e.g. gender, race, domestic/international) in PhD students. I was impressed by their long-lasting discussion and felt their passion to make their own community better.

Overall, I believe this experience helped me a lot to learn about a different research community and to develop ideas on the next step for my own career. I would like to thank all the faculty and staff members who supported this program.