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Richard Sima

School: Johns Hopkins University
Major: Neuroscience

In science, the only greater joy than discovery is sharing it with others. As a Neuroscience Ph.D student at Johns Hopkins University, I’ve experienced firsthand how hand-won our scientific truths are. The clichés regarding research are true: my experiments measuring brain activity in mice did not always succeed; my analyses on how stimulating one brain area affected functionality in another spat out as many coding bug errors as insights; and I drank more coffee than was probably healthy. There were many dark months spent troubleshooting the basic functionality of my instruments instead of collecting actual data. It was during those times when I doubted my place in science and, perhaps paradoxically, when I redoubled my efforts in science communication.
I volunteered for Project Bridge, a graduate student-run science outreach group, and gave lessons to public school children on scientific experiments they could perform at home. Sometimes the best way to rekindle one’s own passion in something (like science) is to spark it in someone else – seeing the innate energetic curiosity on the children’s faces reminded me why I went into science in the first place. In 2016, I co-founded the Johns Hopkins Science Policy Group (jhscipolgroup.org) to promote scientific advocacy and policy engagement by fellow biomedical researchers; creating and following evidence-based policies is necessary for public health, and the short-shrift science sometimes gets in politics was alarming. As president, I spearheaded organizing advocacy events addressing healthcare reform, science research funding, the effects of tax reform on graduate education, and gun regulation reform. Over 180 attendees wrote and called their representatives in Congress. For many students and postdoctoral researchers, our events provided the opportunity and guidance for them to contact their representatives for the first time. We also organized science policy seminars and skill-building workshops for scientists who wanted to pursue a career in policy and benefit the STEM field in ways other than research.
These science communication contributions to STEM actually helped me with my own dissertation project. It allowed me to think about science more broadly and recontextualize the research I was doing. As I enter my final Ph.D year, I’ve overcome many of the scientific challenges that plagued me (though new ones always pop up). I’ve discovered a novel brain circuit connecting the auditory system with the cerebellum, a brain area long believed to be only involved with movement. My findings improve our understanding of how animals and humans combines contextual information from other senses and their own body’s movements with auditory information to decide how to behave in an uncertain world. While I’m excited about my contribution to humanity’s knowledge about the brain, I still consider my ongoing and consistent science communication efforts my greatest achievement.
As the astronomer and science communicator Carl Sagan once said, “science is a candle in the dark.” As a scientist, I have sought to kindle the flame and spread its light – and will continue to do so for the rest of my life.


Essay: Mindfulness Meditation

As a Neuroscience Ph.D student battling both major depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), meditation helps me both calm my racing thoughts and pull me out of low mood states. It is no means easy to meditate consistently, but the effects I experience are real and are borne out by new research into mindfulness meditation’s myriad health effects.
Drawing upon Eastern practices and combining with modern biomedical understanding, mindfulness meditation has widespread therapeutic implications for people suffering from a variety of ailments and disabilities. Mindfulness meditation is currently hypothesized to enhance self-regulation, in domains of attention control, self-awareness, and emotional regulation. Recent neuroscience research has found that consistent mindfulness practice results in biological changes in brain functions and structure, especially in areas associated with executive functions, attention, and emotional regulation. As such, patients with problems in attention or emotional regulation have benefited from programs training them in mindfulness meditation.
Patients with depression experience improvements in their emotion regulation and stress level, decreasing distractive and ruminative thoughts and behavior. The practice also decreases the rate of relapse or recurrence of depression. Anxiety is also reduced over long-periods. Because of its stress relieving effects, mindfulness meditation is applicable and useful for any patient with chronic illnesses, which are naturally stressful and co-morbid with mood disorders. For example, patients with chronic pain or cancer that were trained in mindfulness meditation experienced significant reductions in self-reported pain, mood disturbances, negative body perception, and anxiety and depression. Further, they also reduced the amount of pain relievers they used while reporting higher self-esteem.
Surprisingly, some studies find that the practice also improves immune function, suggesting that meditation can improve health for the whole body as well as the mind. Thus, even for people without chronic illness, this practice can increase long-term well-being and cultivate a healthier body and mind.
Because mindfulness meditation is something that everyone can potentially learn and practice regularly, it is a therapy that can be prescribed more cheaply and widely compared to medication or other medical devices. But more importantly, it allows patients to self-regulate, building their sense of autonomy and control over their lives. On top of improvements to their disabilities, this elevates their human dignity which is hard to achieve in many other medical interventions. For all these reasons and more, mindfulness meditation can make the largest impact on quality of life for disabled people.