What are the perks of being a neuroscientist?

Hi Jenny,

There are, in general, two ways to become a neuroscientist: you could either get a M.D. and become a physician scientist that focuses on neural science, or you can get a PhD focusing on Neuroscience. I have only met a couple physician scientist working on neural science so that I don't know much about it. But based on the conversation I had with them, the major advantage is that you can work with human. In biomedical field, human data is always the gold standard. I would say this is a huge advantage. The disadvantage includes regulatory hurdles, lack of sample quality and quantity controls.

Alternatively, you can get your PhD and work with model systems. Model system includes (but not limit to) neurons (either from animals, patients, or derived from human stem cells), mice, rats, ferrets, and monkeys. The major advantage is that you can do lots of perturbation of the systems, such as knock out of knock down genes/ non-coding RNAs, different treatments. It is also easier to control the quality and quantity of samples. The major disadvantage is all the models are flawed. This means that finding an appropriate model system is not an easy job. I saw some other people's whole PhD project being trashed because of a bad choice of model system.

I would also encourage you to work in a neural science lab when you are doing your degree. Working in a biology is a hard life. It is better to figure out whether you like a life of being a scientist in general.

Best regards,

Yuezhe