From the Lab to the Limelight - Blog version of our #TraineeTuesday Twitter series
This #TraineeTuesday, we’re showcasing Clayton Barnes (a PhD student in the Cardin lab) who recently won an F31 from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to study the dynamics of norepinephrine in the neocortex. Find out how his curiosity took root!
The majority of psychiatric drugs target neuromodulatory systems, yet “scary little” is known about when and where neuromodulators are released. Clayton will use mesoscopic widefield imaging to image the spatiotemporal patterns of norepinephrine release in the brain.
My approach to science has always been to dream up a new tool or combination of techniques and think ‘what kinds of questions could we address with this?’ I was fortunate enough that my mentor also has the same approach, because I imagine most others would have encouraged me to do something more conservative. I am also fortunate to have the technical resources here at Yale.
Clayton Barnes
Clayton’s run-in with brachial neuritis in high school drove him to devour literature on neuroscience. At the International Brain Bee his senior year, he met Christopher Lapish, PhD, a professor at Indiana University, who fostered his programming and robotics skills for research on substance use disorder throughout college.
The Cardin lab’s work excited him — at the time, no one else was doing large-scale recording of neuromodulator release & its effect on neural activity. To Clayton, it’s imperative to have an “affable social environment” like Yale’s, where “everyone is friendly.”
Clayton will continue studying how norepinephrine acts throughout the cortex with his F31. In the future, he wants to create a mathematical account of how aggression, sleep and other motivated behaviors emerge from cell populations, from a dynamical systems modeling angle.
Outside of research, Clayton cofounded the group “Applied Philosophy in Neuroscience” (APHINE) this year, seeking to foster an interdisciplinary environment and invite speakers for neuroscientists and philosophers alike.
“Growing up, I really enjoyed thinking about the ‘big questions,’ i.e., how do our thoughts and feelings arise from physical matter? If I hadn’t come down with a rare (but fortunately transient) neurological disorder called brachial neuritis, I likely would have gone into philosophy.” Clayton said.