Understanding the Brain: The MBL Perspective | Marine Biological Laboratory

It's an intensely creative time, each June, July and August, when the MBL's five neuroscience courses are running full tilt and their research agendas seem limited only by the human need to sleep. If any environment can propel us toward a deep understanding of how the brain works, it's this one, claim Rae Nishi and colleagues in a recent issue of Neuron.

Research training at the MBL is an "immersive, transformative experience: students develop a fearlessness from grappling with the latest technology and the boundaries of current understanding," writes Nishi, a neuroscientist and the Burroughs Wellcome Director of Education at MBL.

Dye-labeled leech neurons. Credit: Neural Systems and Behavior Course, 2014

The article explores the factors that combine in the uniquely successful "MBL Model" of scientific training. As one mentor noted, they had "sent a student to a course at Woods Hole and received a scientist in return."

"Ultimately, [MBL] students realize that they can do anything they desire scientifically as long as they seek expert guidance and as long as they are willing to delve deeply into the experiments they want to pursue," write Nishi and her co-authors, who are eminent faculty from numerous institutions who direct the MBL's neuroscience courses.