864: Investigating How Brain Inflammation May Contribute to Compulsivity - Dr. Laura Bradfield

0:00Hi, everyone. This is your People Behind the Science podcast host, Dr. Marie McNeely, and I'm delighted to have you here with us for our 864th episode with our guest, Dr. Laura Bradfield. Listeners, if you want to learn more about our show, check out some past episodes and find our recommended book list. You can visit us at peoplebehindthescience.com. And in our episode today, Laura is going to share some excellent stories. So get ready to meet another one of our brilliant people behind the science. Every day, discoveries are made that will change our

0:33understanding of the world around us. Dr. Marie McNeely is here to bring you the brilliant minds who are making these discoveries so they can share their incredible stories and take you on an amazing journey. Welcome to People Behind the Science. Hello, everyone, and welcome to People Behind the Science. Today, I am excited to be speaking with our guest scientist, Dr. Laura Bradfield. So, Laura, welcome to the show today. How are you?

1:05I'm great. Thank you so much for having me. Well, thank you so much for joining us on the show. I'm excited to chat with you and learn a little bit more about you and the wonderful work that you do. But before we get into those details, let me take a moment to tell our listeners a little bit about your current position and how you got there. So listeners, Laura is senior lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney. She received her bachelor's degree with honors in psychology and her PhD in neuroscience from the University of New South Wales, Sydney. She conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Sydney and subsequently at the University of New South Wales. And prior to joining the faculty

1:40at the University of Sydney, Laura served as a lecturer at the University of New South Wales and a research fellow and senior research fellow at the University of Technology, Sydney. And Laura, today we want to get to know you as a scientist, but also more generally as a person as well. So can you tell us what do you like to do when you're not doing science? Anyone who knows me will be able to tell you that I love to sing. So if there's ever a conference that has karaoke, that's a big attraction for me that will factor into my decision whether or not to

2:13attend the conference. If there's a conference that doesn't have karaoke, but there's a chance to arrange karaoke, then I have been known to be part of that effort. So I love to sing, but I also love to work out. So I do CrossFit a few times a week. They're probably my two main passions outside of science. I'm also a single mother of a 14-year-old daughter, so that keeps me busy. Oh, wonderful. And you mentioned you're a karaoke connoisseur. What are some of your go-to songs? People always ask me this. I'm like, I have so many.

2:44Or a genre, maybe. Well, I love to work up to the big ballad. So I maybe start with something like Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars and then work up to, you know, some Whitney or some Mariah. I love it. I'm not a great singer myself, so I usually cling to the walls at karaoke events. Oh, that is. Hope people don't notice me, right? Right. Well, wonderful to get a window into your life outside of science. And it sounds like you've got a lot to keep you busy, but I'd love to talk about your science as well, because you were doing some really cool research. So Laura, how do you describe your research to

3:17people who are outside of neuroscience or people who might not be familiar with your work? Thank you very much for saying that. So what we really try and do in our lab is work on the behavioral and brain mechanisms of compulsive disorders or compulsivity as a trait. So because we work with animal models, rather than trying to model a particular disorder like OCD or substance use disorder, we look at compulsivity as a trait as it spans across all of these different disorders. And there's also elements of compulsivity in Parkinson's disease,

3:49for example, and Huntington's disease. So because we're working with animals, it just seems more of a biological reality in our eyes to model compulsivity rather than a particular disorder. We've been working on that more recently, trying to build better models of compulsivity in animals. There's a lot of fancy techniques available to us in science and neuroscience in particular. So things like optogenetics, where you're using light to inactivate or excite neuronal activity, which we also do use. And they can give you a lot of specificity in terms of what cell type

4:26you might be manipulating and things like that. But when you look at a person who has these compulsive disorders, and when you look into their brains, doing those kind of manipulations is not a very realistic recapitulation of what is actually going on in their brain. So what we've been trying to do is induce neuroinflammatory responses in the brains of animals, because that's what we see in people and looking at what that does to behavior. And then what we'd really like to move on to next is how to treat those changes in behavior that we see and cognition.

4:57Very cool. Do you have ideas of what kinds of treatments might be beneficial? I have a bunch of ideas. At the moment, one interesting thing that we've been finding is that if we induce neuroinflammation in different parts of the brain, we get different effects on behavior. So we've looked at the hippocampus, which is a very central brain region for learning and memory. And this part of the brain shows neuroinflammation in diseases like Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis, depression. So not necessarily compulsive disorders, but we're not switching ourselves off to other diseases as well. And what we're finding there is neuroinflammation

5:31causes quite big sex differences. We call it sex because we're working with animals. Gender is a human construct. Something that might be really interesting to pursue there is sex-specific treatments, maybe things that alter hormonal levels in the hippocampus. In another part of the brain, the striatum, which is more where you see neuroinflammation in individuals with compulsive disorders, we don't see those sex differences. But some of the work that I've done has shown that there's a particular neurotransmitter involved in flexible cognition in this part of the brain

6:03called acetylcholine. So if we can maybe increase the levels of acetylcholine in that part of the brain in those neuroinflammatory models, we have a hypothesis that that could rescue behavior to the level of the controls. That's really interesting. Well, Laura, I could talk to you about this all day, but I won't dwell. Let's talk a little bit about what motivates you. I think being able to do research that you're really excited about and really invested in can motivate you to go into the lab every day. But there are challenges in science and sometimes it can help to have a little

6:36quote or a saying or just some inspirational thing that keeps you moving through every day. So what really motivates or inspires you? And do you have a favorite quote? I don't really have a quote. So I don't have like an Instagram account. I'm not a sort of motivational quote kind of person. The reason that I got into science and the thing that I've been motivated by from the start is just a desire to help people really. Like it's as simple as that. In my postdoc, I did a lot of work where I was answering fundamental questions about what does

7:06this brain region do in decision making or what does this cell type, what is its role in selecting actions and things like that. And I think that those are really important questions. But since starting my own lab, what I've really tried to concentrate on is putting those questions into a context where it can answer something about a disease or a disorder, something that might have a bit more potential to help people somewhere down the line. Of course, the work that I do is in animal models. So it does require translation. And that's something I'd like to get into more in the

7:41future. But yeah, I've just moved my lab again. So we need to get experiments up and running at the basic neuroscience level before we start looking into translational pathways. Oh, that makes sense. And I know the big lab move can be an ordeal. So perhaps we'll get into some of the details later. But I'd love to talk about some of the people who motivated and inspired you over the course of your scientific journey. So do you have mentors or role models or just inspirational figures that you've looked up to that really had a big impact on your career? Absolutely. Again, so many. In Australia, I do feel like we're a little bit behind the states in

8:17terms of equality for males and females in behavioral neuroscience. I know that some of my colleagues may not agree with that, but we are making some headway. So I'd say some of the female neuroscientists that have gone before me, and they're not necessarily extremely senior or have been around for a really long time because there aren't that many really senior female neuroscientists in Australia. So some of my colleagues who are similar in age and career stage to me, but I also would love to highlight Suzanne Armari. She does the work that I just think is incredible. And she's a psychiatrist

8:53as well as a behavioral neuroscientist. So she works with patients with obsessive compulsive disorder, as well as working in animal models. And she really allows those two streams to inform each other. And I think she just does some incredible research. I love that. And I think having these people that you can look up to in science can be really valuable, even if they are these peers that you're bouncing ideas off of and kind of helping each other make it through the next stage of your career. I think that can be truly valuable. Absolutely. Well, let's talk a little bit about how your career began. I love hearing these origin stories

9:26from scientists. So do you remember the first time, Laura, that you started getting interested or thinking about science? So this is a funny one. I'm actually smiling over here because I started off doing psychology, so a psychology degree. And I remember, so this was in the early 2000s when your enrollment wasn't online, you had to go in in person. And I remember getting sent to the Faculty of Science to line up and enroll in my psychology degree and being really confused because I didn't know that psychology was a science. Oh, wow.

9:58So in high school, I wasn't much of a science person. I was much more of a history English person, and I hadn't envisioned myself becoming a scientist ever. I was really surprised. And then obviously, I did end up enrolling and doing my psychology degree. And to my enormous surprise, out of all of the subjects that we studied in psychology, behavioral neuroscience was my favorite, which I found quite surprising because it was kind of the hardest science of all of the different subjects that we did. So yeah, it was a non-traditional journey as a lot of scientists have,

10:29I suppose. Definitely. Do you remember when you first got involved in research? Did this happen as an undergraduate student or was it not until graduate school? So in Australia, we have this honours year where you do a research project for a year where you finished your bachelor's degree. And that's when I first started doing research. I remember I really, really loved the theory of science, but I found going into the lab and running experiments a bit more challenging, which again, I think is probably the opposite experience

10:59to a lot of scientists. They really love to be in the lab and the theory, maybe they find a bit more challenging. As the years have gone on since then, I really appreciate being in the lab and now being in a position where I'm mostly in my office working on the theoretical side of things, writing papers, writing grants and that sort of thing. I really miss being in the lab. But yeah, it was again, a non-traditional journey, I guess. Certainly. So then how did you ultimately decide that you wanted to go get that PhD in neuroscience? I think I'd realised by that stage that being a clinical psychologist was not for me. As much as

11:36I have deep empathy for other people, I think that maybe I don't have the kind of constitution to sit down and listen to people talking all day. Whereas I really had developed this passion for behavioural neuroscience and the fundamental questions of associative learning and how does the brain learn and how does it remember and how do we make decisions and those sorts of questions. Then I moved into doing my PhD, which was actually in fear conditioning. It was quite different to what

12:07I do now. But one thing that really drove my passion was, so I became acquainted with the Raskola-Wagner model. It's a very famous model of associative learning. It's a very simple equation compared to a lot of other models that are out there. But the idea that you could take a mathematical equation to model the learning process was really appealing to me. And I still find that quite appealing now. So it sounds like you had a good experience in your PhD program. And then when you are approaching the

12:39end of your PhD, there's another kind of big decision point. So how did you decide you wanted to go get a postdoc versus start looking for faculty positions versus kind of abandoned science altogether at that point? I think a lot of PhD students are burnt out at the end. What was the decision process like for you? I most definitely was burnt out at the end, no doubt about it. I remember handing my thesis in and all week leading up to handing my thesis in, I was thinking, oh, yeah, I can't wait to catch up with friends and go for some drinks and do all these things that I haven't had

13:10time to do for months and months. And then handing my thesis in and going home and falling asleep for about 10 hours or something like that. I remember the most exciting thing being catching up on the sleep that I'd missed out on. So the person that I ended up doing my postdoc with, Bernard Blaine, I'd seen him give a talk early in my candidature for my PhD. And I remember thinking, I want to work with that guy. I was just really impressed by the work that he was doing. I thought it was incredible.

13:41And basically, I harassed him at every conference that I saw him at until he gave in and gave me a job. At the time, he was working at UCLA. And I thought I'd be going over to UCLA because I really wanted to travel. And then he said to me, oh, no, I'm coming back to Sydney. So I was a little disappointed, but I decided the tradeoff was worth it to work with him. So I knew from pretty early on what I wanted to do for my postdoc and that I was going to do a postdoc. The idea of getting a faculty

14:12position straight out of my PhD was not something that I thought was possible, I guess. And I certainly didn't feel ready at that stage. I think I needed time to develop my ideas and also my confidence in terms of leading a team and being the person that's ultimately responsible for the research that's coming out of the lab. Definitely. I think the faculty job search is often an ordeal. So I think taking the time to really prepare for it is a smart choice. And when you ultimately got on the market and decided you wanted to look for a faculty job, what was that process

14:43like? And how did you ultimately land at the University of New South Wales? I never had a faculty job at the University of New South Wales. I was promoted as part of my postdoctoral position. That was why I was a lecturer there. Yeah, it's kind of a different process in Australia. I think I was a postdoc for a long time, eight years in total, I think. I think if I was in the States, I'd be kind of seen as too old for a faculty position. I did apply for some jobs in the States and got very close and flew over and got very excited about

15:14them and then got pipped at the last post for a couple, which was a bit disappointing as well. So I ended up getting this job at the University of Technology, which is really where I started my own independent lab. And it was the end of a fairly long road, I would say. And I applied for a lot of jobs at that stage. I had a lot of rejections and this job came up that just was quite suitable for me. They were creating a new centre for neuroscience and they were looking for group leaders to lead

15:45independent groups. So I applied and got the job and then started my own independent position over there. Unfortunately, that centre, due to COVID-related financial reasons, was closed down three years later. I ended up having to move my lab and then I've just started another job. So I've moved my lab again. So there's been a lot of disruptions in my independent career, but hopefully I'll stay in this one place for a little while now. Definitely. And I think your experiences are not that uncommon. Having to search for positions,

16:19struggling to find a position, having to move around a lot once you even get that faculty position, these things happen in science. And it's very difficult in the early portion of your career to find stability. So for you, what kept you pursuing academia instead of throwing in the towel? I don't know if you've ever seen the episode of The Simpsons where Bart is reaching for the cupcake and he gets a electric shock and he just keeps reaching for the cupcake, whereas a rat is much smarter, reaches for the cupcake, gets the shock and then stops reaching for the cupcake. I always joke that academics were like Bart because punishment learning is one thing that I

16:55study and you always have one rat or a couple of rats that will keep pressing the lever even though they get the electric shock. And that's how I feel. I'm like, why am I persisting in the face of all of this rejection? But I think being someone who studies decision-making, you have some good insights into these things. And one of the things that we know is if you're a rat and you press a lever and you get a variable reinforcement schedule. So rather than getting a pellet every time you press the lever

17:27or getting it every five times, you get it on an unpredictable schedule, right? So it could be five times, it could be 10 times. These are the schedules that get the most pressing of the lever. So it's the same in academia. You get this reinforcement, you get your paper accepted or you get a grant and it's very unpredictable. But when you get it, it's so rewarding. So it kind of keeps you going, I guess, which is maybe a bleak way of looking at it. I'd say a less bleak thing and something that I really

17:59draw great joy from is mentoring and training early career researchers. There's just so many incredibly talented, intelligent, young researchers out there. And I just love seeing them blossom and seeing their ideas come to fruition. I get a lot of satisfaction out of that. I think that's wonderful. And I appreciate you sharing your career journey with us. And I think right now, you mentioned you're setting up your new lab, getting everything running again. But do you have a particular project that you've started or that you're hoping to start soon that

18:30you are just so excited about and want to share with us today? There's a project that my current PhD student who's writing her thesis has been working on that I think is really exciting. I'm going to try and describe it without too much jargon because the field is a very jargonistic field. It's called contingency degradation. So I'm going to try and explain. Yeah, I know, right? We have these awful names. So the idea came out of another kind of jargonistic term, which is extinction. And this is something that's been around since the days of Pavlov. So Pavlov

19:05famously trained dogs that a noise would predict food and then they would start salivating. And then he found if he played the noise and didn't give them the food that he would extinguish the association between the noise and the food. But what he also discovered was if he trained the dogs to associate the noise with the food, extinguished that association, and then left the dogs for three hours or five hours, came back and played the tone again, they would start salivating again. So this was called

19:37spontaneous recovery. And it's just the idea that if you have an association, so you have a cue or an action or something that's been paired with some kind of biologically relevant outcome, and you've then taken away that biologically relevant outcome and you reduce the responding, the responding will come back if you leave them for a certain amount of time. So this has been really well replicated across a bunch of different paradigms. And it's also thought to be one of the processes that underlies relapse in compulsive disorders, or indeed in anxiety disorders. So if you have a phobia, for example, you might get

20:14exposure therapy, which would be being exposed to whatever it is that you have your phobia of, so say spiders, but you get that exposure in the absence of the feared outcome. So if you're scared of being bitten, you get exposed to spiders, you don't get bitten, and it extinguishes that association. So you've become less fearful. But because of spontaneous recovery, three weeks later, that fear might reappear. So what we've been working on with contingency degradation is rather than just

20:45extinguishing that association, we give a reward every time the rat doesn't press the lever, so doesn't perform the outcome. And what we found is that this produces a much longer lasting reduction in responding. So what we're hoping is that it could be used to develop a relapse-resistant treatment program, because it seems to be less vulnerable to this spontaneous recovery.

21:16Well, this sounds like a really cool project. And I guess, where are you in terms of the stage of this project? Is it something that you're wrapping up at the moment? And are you thinking about next steps? We are writing up the initial results that we have. And we've got some data looking at which part of the brain is responsible for this phenomenon. So that's being written up now. But like with any project, as you wrap up that portion of the project, there's 50 other questions that come up that we're looking at answering. We have to be selective. Obviously, we don't have infinite time and resources to

21:47run every single experiment that we would like to run. But we are working on that now. And just looking at how robust exactly is this relapse-resistant learning? Are there ways that we can make it more robust? Are there ways that we can make it less robust? And doing further work into the brain mechanisms of that as well. Well, that sounds wonderful. And I know, as a scientist, the work is never done. Never done. Which I think is part of the challenge because there's so much to do every day. And I think you go through these periods where oftentimes it is just a slog, whether it's completely setting up

22:21your lab once again, whether it's just a struggle that you're picking at day after day that doesn't seem to be making progress. And I think these kinds of challenges and maybe failures are really common in science, but people don't often get to hear about them. So we love talking about them on our show to kind of give people a more realistic view of what happens in science. So Laura, do you have an example of a major failure or perhaps just a big struggle that you had to go through? And if so, could you tell us a little bit more about it? I actually feel like I'm just coming out of a period like that right now. There's always rejection in

22:53the job that we do. But the last couple of years, I felt like has been a particularly high amount of rejection. Papers getting rejected multiple times and grants in particular. So unfortunately, my current funding is running out at the end of this year. I just got another two grant rejections last week. So I'm still processing that. It's tricky. And also with having moved labs last year. So that's been an extremely busy time setting up the lab, getting to grips with my new teaching roles, as well as mountains of paperwork

23:27that are involved with moving labs. So it's been a lot. And I wanted to kind of talk about this a little bit as well, because I think it's important to be vulnerable, but I haven't been getting through it alone. So I have been talking to a psychologist in the last couple of weeks who's been really helping me. And what I've really been trying to do is nothing that's reinventing the wheel or anything. It's focusing in what I can control and trying to kind of let go of the things I can't control. So for example, I can't control the fact that my funding is running out. But what I can do

24:00is apply for every opportunity that comes around and do the best application that I can possibly do and those sorts of things. So I'd say I'm starting to come out of that period now, but it's not easy and I'm not doing it alone as well. I've got lots of support from colleagues and my lab members are just wonderful. Oh, that's good. I'm so glad to hear you have a support system because I think that's another thing that in science, oftentimes, especially in this relatively early career faculty stage, early to mid faculty stage, people feel like they need to assert themselves in the field and do

24:31everything themselves to be successful, quote unquote. But I think having a team behind you seeking help, seeking resources when you need them is so important. You don't have to go through it alone and you shouldn't go through it alone. Absolutely. And I think that's something that I really had to remind myself of. I am that kind of person that does strive to be extremely independent. And there comes a point where you have to say to yourself, I can't do all of this alone. I need to rely on other people. I need to take advantage of the resources that are there. That's a big lesson

25:06that I've taken away from all of this actually, is that there is help out there and we should seek it out. Don't try and suffer through things alone. Right. And oftentimes people are happy to help, whether it's just like a mentor who wants to sit and chat with you for an hour or people who are happy to help step up and take up additional responsibilities in the lab, these sorts of things. So very helpful. Well, I appreciate you taking us through one of these dark times and hopefully there's a light at the end of the tunnel for you here. Thank you. I hope so. Oh, absolutely. But let's not dwell on the tough times. Let's focus

25:37on the successes as well, Laura, because I think you've done some amazing work. You've had some great successes to celebrate. So do you have a favorite success story you want to share with us? So I think the award that I've won that has meant the most to me is in 2022, my students nominated me for supervisor of the year at my university at the time, University of Technology Sydney, and I won that award. That's the one that really means the most to me because it showed me that my students really appreciate everything that I've done for them and that I'm putting into

26:10them and their careers. On a personal level, that would be my biggest success. Were you surprised by it or did you know they had nominated you? I had no idea. I didn't even go to the ceremony where they were giving out the awards because I didn't even know I was nominated until afterwards. And I got this email saying, you've won this award. And then I talked to my lab and I said, oh, did you guys know about this? And they said, yeah, we nominated you. And it was amazing. It was really touching. Oh, that's awesome. How did you celebrate? I can't even remember. Probably with cake. That's how we generally celebrate in the lab,

26:45with cake. Oh, that is fabulous. I love cake. Now, do you get science themed cakes or is it just any cake will do? Any cake will do. Yeah. There was at the university I was working at before, they did have this amazing cake competition that was a microscopy themed. So people made these incredible cakes. I'm not very artistic, so I never entered that, but I did very much enjoy looking at the amazing creations that others had created. I love that. Well, it's wonderful to hear more about one of these meaningful successes. And I think

27:16mentorship is a huge part of your career and your responsibilities every day as a scientist. So can you talk a little bit about mentorship and how you approach mentorship in your lab today? As I've said, it's something that's really important to me and something that I've seen some bad examples of throughout the years. So that's really helped me look at what does make for good mentorship and what can we do to make the lab a safe space for all voices to be heard. So we get new honor students at the start of every year. And I give this presentation to the lab

27:49about psychological safety. And it's this kind of idea that we want everybody in the lab to feel safe to be able to speak up. We don't want to have this kind of hierarchical system going on in the lab where only the senior people speak up in lab meetings and the junior people think that their voices are not as important as the senior people. I give a presentation about how we can foster this environment of psychological safety and why it's so important to hear the voices of people who

28:21maybe haven't been working in the field for 20 years. They might not have that breadth of knowledge and experience that we have, but they're coming in with a fresh perspective. So every voice is important. Every voice is valuable. And we want to hear that. I really try to foster that. And it's a good reminder for myself as well, because I'm also a work in progress. I'm not perfect. And I know that I can sometimes be a bit dominant in lab meetings and I have to remind myself, sit back and listen because some of the best ideas come from listening. And that's kind of the philosophy that we just try

28:56and carry through. And I've been extremely lucky with my lab members. They've all been incredible and gotten along really, really well. So yeah, it seems to be working so far. Well, I think that is fantastic, Laura. And I think you brought up a really good point that people who are new to the lab or new to the field, maybe more generally, they don't come in with the same assumptions and biases. And sometimes they ask questions that make you just go, huh, never thought about that. Exactly. And one thing I'm trying to fight against as well is what I hear a lot of people saying, and especially people who might be women or minorities, when they ask a

29:31question at a conference or when they speak up in a lab meeting, they say, this might be a stupid question, but, or sorry, this might've already been covered. Or they kind of start their question with an apology. And I'm trying to try and mentor people to say, you don't need to apologize. I promise you, your question is not stupid. If you're thinking something, there's other people in the audience that are thinking the same thing. So that's really what I mean when I'm talking about trying to foster this atmosphere of psychological safety. There is no stupid question. There is no

30:03need for any apology. Just let your voice be heard. I think that is wonderful. It sounds like you are developing a fantastic lab environment there. And I think this is so important for doing the work to answer some of these big, important questions in science and health and in the brain. But I know taking a break is important as well. So we try to encourage our listeners to take breaks, to read for fun, not just memorize all of the scientific literature in your field. So we love recommending books for everybody who listens to the show. So Laura, do you have a favorite book, whether it's sciencey or not sciencey, that you want to tell us about so

30:35we can add it to our own reading lists? My favorite book is absolutely not sciencey at all. Since I was a teenager, I have been obsessed with Interview with the Vampire. I love the book. I love the movie. I love the TV show. I've read it, I don't know how many times, more than 20 times, definitely. That's my favorite book. Definitely not science related. But I do have a favorite science related book as well. R. Douglas Fields, The Other Brain. It's about the role of glia, which is a really big interest of mine. And it's just a

31:07really nicely written, really accessible book, I found. Having come to that topic from not necessarily knowing very much about glia, I was able to follow most of what was being said. That's fantastic. We've actually done an interview with Doug Fields. No way! I'll have to look it up. Listeners, if you haven't checked out that episode, definitely find it. Definitely check that out. Yes. Oh, well, wonderful. We appreciate you sharing these recommendations for us. The Other Brain and Interview with the Vampire listeners will put those on our websites. And I think one of the things that's

31:37great about careers in science are some of the opportunities that you get to travel, in addition to the cool things that you get to study. So you get to go to different places for whether it's job opportunities or to go to conferences and work with collaborators. So Laura, do you have a favorite place that your science has taken you? The vast majority of the journeys that I take have been to the States, actually. And I do typically tend to go to the West Coast because traveling from Australia, it's a minimum 12, 13 hour flight. I have been to Europe a couple of times, but it's an even longer flight to Europe. So maybe I don't

32:13have the breadth of experience that some of your researchers based in the United States have had with traveling. But I'd say my favorite conference that I've been to was a Gordon conference on basal ganglia. And that was mainly because my academic idol, who I was talking about previously, Suzanne Amari, was there. And she's such a wonderful, beautiful person. I knew she was going to this conference and I was excited about meeting her, but I didn't know what she looked like or anything. And I was just drinking my coffee one morning, walking along. And this lady came up to me and

32:45says, oh, hi, how are you? And I was like, oh, yeah, I'm good. Thank you. And she says, hi, I'm Suzanne Amari. And I, in my memory, I spat my coffee out. I was fangirling. But yeah, she's just such a wonderful human being as well as an incredible scientist. So that really was my favorite conference experience, but not so much to do with the place, but more to do with the person. That's wonderful. So did you actually have a chance to have a conversation with her beyond kind of the small talk and introduction? I did. She had a postdoc that was Australian, actually, and we ended up putting in a symposium proposal to a conference and we got accepted. So

33:20we kind of have this ongoing stream of communication, I guess, through this postdoc who's now back in Australia, or she's actually got a faculty position now. Oh, that's awesome. I think sometimes it's a little bit scary when you're meeting your heroes almost because you don't want to be disappointed, but it sounds like she lived up to the hype. She did. She absolutely did. Yeah. They say don't meet your heroes, but in this case, I'd say that that saying is wrong. Now, how was the rest of the Gordon meeting? It was good. The Gordon meetings, for those who aren't familiar, they have a big break in the middle of the day and then they go into the evening. My brain, my cognitive capacity is not at

33:56its best after about, say, eight o'clock at night. So I did struggle a little bit with the evening talks, but the quality of the science was exceptional and the networking opportunities was also excellent. Obviously, even outside of meeting Susanna Murray. Oh, this sounds amazing. Do you remember what city it was in? No, it was in California. Okay. I want to say Ventura, but I'm not a hundred percent sure. That could have been a different Gordon conference that I went to. Oh, that's amazing. Well, it sounds like this was a fantastic experience. Again,

34:29one of those opportunities to kind of meet your scientific idols that you definitely don't want to pass up. And I think something that we've touched on throughout our conversation are just some of the fantastic people that you get to meet as a scientist and how they're just wonderful humans overall, not just great scientists. And I think this is something that a lot of people in the public may not appreciate because there are these stereotypes and there's these certain ways that scientists are portrayed in the media as being very serious and critical and working all by themselves in the lab every day. And I think that's just not what science is like in so many cases. So we love trying to break the stereotypes and giving people some insight into this

35:02human side of science. So Laura, do you have an example or a story you could share with us that goes into the human side of science, whether it's quirky lab traditions or just funny or fond memories that you shared with colleagues that really go against this stereotype? There is a story that comes to mind. It doesn't make me look very good, but I'll tell it anyway.

35:21So during my postdoc years, I was working on, I was slicing some tissue on this machine called a Libritone. And in order to attach the tissue to the specimen holder, you need to use superglue. And at some point during the process, somehow some superglue must have gotten on the floor. And there was a room full of my other postdoctoral colleagues and I must have stepped on the superglue and I got glued to the floor, which they found hilarious. And it's kind of gone down in folklore.

35:53It became this almost a lab meme where, oh, Laura, she loves science so much. She glued herself to the floor. She's glued to the lab. I think that's probably the one that comes to mind. Oh, I love that. So how did you resolve the situation and get your shoe free?

36:11I think I had to take, well, I had to take my shoe off and get a razor blade and scrape it off. It was a very dignified moment in my career. Sprawled out on the lab floor. Yeah.

36:25Exactly. Well, did you have any superglue mishaps afterwards or was that sort of, you learned your lesson and it was clear sailing? It was a one and done. I learned my lesson from that one. Yeah. No more. I actually, I tended to stay away from the vibratarium as much as possible after that. Yeah. Stick to it, right? Stick to it. Yeah. Yeah. Glue myself to it. Yeah. Oh, well, Laura, this is a fantastic story. And I feel like going down in the lab lore is sort of an honor. And now people have learned from your lesson and probably you've saved some other people from embarrassment. You can just sort of feel good about that. Just doing my duty over here. Yep.

36:57That's right. Well, it's wonderful to hear more about your lab. And I think bringing this sense of humor to science is really important because there are dark days. It is tough. It's not an easy job. And if it were, we would have all these big questions answered and we wouldn't still be picking away at them. But there are so many unanswered questions and oftentimes small details like funding, staff, technology, feasibility, time, all of these things keep you from answering the questions you want to answer. So Laura, if we took all of the barriers away and you could do anything, what is the one question you want to answer most?

37:28I think where my research is really heading at the moment is that even with animals that we keep in these very controlled conditions, so they're housed in the same kind of conditions, the temperature is controlled, the diet is controlled, the lights come on a particular time and the lights go off at a particular time. Yet we see still a large amount of variability in the data. And what that's really telling us is that there are huge individual differences between susceptibility to various types of compulsion and how effective a particular treatment

38:02will be. And that's something that really takes a lot of resources to study properly because you need enormous sample sizes to determine why is it that this particular animal slash person is going to be vulnerable to this particular risk factor and this person isn't. So that would really be what I would like to dive into is individual differences. What makes one person or one rat in our case more vulnerable to a potential compulsive disorder than another? And what makes one person more

38:35reactive to a treatment than another? Well, Laura, I think this is a fantastic question. And I love this idea because I think so often in science, you sort of collapse everything to averages. And I think so often you lose this rich variability and there's so many different questions encapsulated within the variability that you see in every data set. Exactly. Yeah. Well, wonderful dream project to keep me and our listeners thinking this afternoon. And I'd love to end our conversation by just talking about advice because I think oftentimes when you reach these critical points in your career path, it can

39:06be helpful to have advice to get you to the next step. So when you look at your own life and your own career, Laura, was there one piece of advice that somebody gave you that really helped you that you can share with everybody today? I think it's probably just what I've already touched on, which is don't be afraid to ask for help. There are resources out there. There are colleagues willing to help. There are lab members willing to help. People usually are more than happy to step up when you ask. And it can be very tempting to try and take everything on yourself and be very independent. But that is inevitably going

39:42to get too much. So that would be it. Don't be afraid to take advantage of the resources that are available and ask for help. Well, I think that is outstanding advice, Laura. And is there any other last piece of advice or maybe a last note of inspiration that you'd like to leave everybody with today? I think I really take my inspiration from the early career researchers. And again, as we've talked about, their fresh perspectives and insights and really sort of reminding myself to listen and not

40:12be so dominant is always very important. Absolutely. I think science is a conversation. So I love that note to end on, Laura. Thank you so much for sharing your perspectives and some of your work with us today. But if our listeners want to learn more, what is the best way for them to do that? So because I have just changed universities, I don't think my profile is up on the university website right now. So the best way right now would be either through my LinkedIn profile or Blue Sky. I believe my handle at Blue Sky is Bradfield underscore Neuro. And LinkedIn, I think if you just

40:46Google my name is probably the best way to find me. Great. Outstanding. Well, listeners, definitely get connected on LinkedIn and Blue Sky. If you have any questions, reach out and ask Laura. And Laura, it's been such a pleasure to chat with you on the show today. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much. And listeners, it's been wonderful to have you here with us as well. We hope you'll join us again for our next episode of People Behind the Science.