It may be difficult to picture a scientist leaving
the lab and picking up a guitar to head out to an open mic night at a local
coffeehouse.
Conversely, it may be odd to consider a performing singer/songwriter
coming home from a weekend of music and putting on her lab coat to head out to
her “day job.”
Turns out, some colleagues have trouble picturing it
as well.
But those are two of the sides to Ashley Juavinett.
A PhD neuroscientist serving her postdoctoral fellowship at Cold Spring Harbor
Laboratory, Juavinett is also a singer/songwriter who has performed at music
venues across the country, and has even released a few independent albums.
“It’s funny,
but at work, it usually takes time for me to come out to people as a musician,”
Juavinett said during a recent phone conversation. “There’ll be some sort of an
event, ‘Hey, I can play. I dabble.’ It’s just kind of happening now that people
are starting to find out. A few months ago I started playing a few more gigs, and
it was like, ‘You have this whole other side of you?’ ‘Yeah, kind of.’”
To her colleagues, Juavinett is a dedicated
scientist studying the effects of multisensory stimuli on mice and how the
brain processes that information. It’s a study she’s been working on since she
began at CSH Laboratory more than 18 months ago.
She knew she wanted to study multisensory
information, but in a more natural context than is often found in studies
involving mice.
“Typically in rodent behavioral research, we train
the rodents to do something and study the brain, but my approach, but it’s hard
and time-consuming to train rodents,” she said. “My approach has been to try to
do something that’s a little more natural to what the rodent typically does.
“The question I’m studying is, ‘How does the brain
combine visual and auditory information in order to guide behavior?’ The basic
idea being that every moment you have to deal with a lot of sensory
information, but somehow your brain has to combine it and help you navigate the
world. To do this, we’re using a mouse model, we have these recording devices
that are kind of amazing that allow you to record from hundreds of neurons in
the brain simultaneously, so we implant these in the mouse brain and the mouse
is freely moving and running around while we expose it to different types of
visual or auditory stimuli, with the basic question being, ‘What is the brain
doing when we present that stimuli?’”
Using neuropixels to map the brain activity, while
also observing the reactions of the mice to the various types of stimuli, help
Juavinett to discern how the mice are combining and processing information.
“We want to try to study the brain in as natural as
possible environment, so I’ve developed this paradigm that takes advantage of
the fact that mice run away from predators that come overhead,” she said. “So
we present visual predators where the predator is basically a dot that expands
in size so it simulates something approaching. There’s a visual version and an
auditory version and a version that has both.
“Behavior-wise, the mice respond much more
vigorously to the multisensory version. So they’re integrating information,
saying ‘There’s something overhead, and I should definitely run away.’ So now
we’re trying to understand what the circuits in the brain are actually doing
differently in that situation where the brain has to combine information.”
The question, then, becomes how can this information
be used to learn about how humans would react to such stimuli?
“The overlap between mice and humans is more in the
way of understanding how brain circuits work in general,” Juavinett said. “Where
neurology is, it’s a tough question to think about how circuits combine
information. People are trying to model circuits, model real behavior and see
how a neural circuit works, how the brain works, how it goes awry with
conditions like schizophrenia or autism.”
Perhaps the most relatable example of this would be
in the way people react to a 3D movie. When Juavinett is out presenting her
group’s findings, video/audio examples of this reaction to stimuli can often
result in viewers reacting as they would to a 3D movie.
“It’s funny, when I give a talk or my adviser gives a
talk, you will see people back away when they show it on screen,” she said.
“But obviously we’re looking for more than just that. People do studies in
infants, trying to understand, at what point do they recognize something is coming
at them. People use stimuli to understand the developmental process.”
•••
While Juavinett may have experience working with
auditory stimuli in a lab setting, she’s an expert in auditory stimuli when it
comes from her soul. She’s been playing guitar and writing original music for
many years; she released an EP, 20 Miles
to Freedom, as an undergrad at Lafayette College, and followed it up two years
later with her first full-length album, Skies
Apart.
“I never really took that leap with music,”
Juavinett said. “Science is what I know and what I love. But what’s nice is
that I still get to stretch my creative muscles a little bit in music and
writing. As long as I have an outlet, I’m a happy person.
“My music has definitely gotten more personal in the
past few years. There’s always a time in people’s lives where it’s very
vulnerable to be sharing your own personal story, and there would always be certain
topics I would leave out. For me, the past few years, my music and my lyrics
have gotten more personal, deeper, which is great for me as an individual, because
writing music is therapy.”
Juavinett also believes her interest in
psychology—which plays a huge part in neuroscience—lends itself to her approach
to writing music … finding ways to connect with others on a personal, emotional
level.
“There’s a desire to understand the human condition
in psychology as well as in music and songwriting, there’s an interest in
exploring what people go through, to see what songs move people, as opposed to
songs that maybe mean something to me but not anyone else. I never really
wanted to study the science or psychology of music. I like having them separate
so that music never feels like work.
“Pursuing music full-time had crossed my mind a few
times. My approach had always been that if I ever got an opportunity in music
that was so amazing, I would leave science and pursue music. But the truth is
those opportunities don’t just pop up, you have to work at it and work at it and
I haven’t really been working at it to make it happen. I find it very
fulfilling and I really enjoy doing what I’m doing: science and research, and
music on the side.”
“I’ve been trying to different styles, I tried to
move into jazz a bit, more raw folk-type things,” she said. “I’m moving away
from the pure acoustic pop thing.”
While Juavinett admits she hasn’t spent too much
time in the local Long Island music scene – something she’d like to remedy
moving forward – she has performed at various open mics, played an acoustic set
at a Fall Festival in Huntington, and plays at a monthly live music yoga class.
“That’s a super-fun and challenging new project,”
she said. “It’s mostly instrumental and what I do usually includes a lot of
vocals. I try to match the mood of the class, play more instrumental pieces,
build up interesting textures. It’s a very different direction.”
“I’m very certain that I do want to keep writing and
sharing my music, but the energy for performing ebbs and flows based on what is
going on in my life. I’m actually quite an introvert, so standing up and
memorizing and preparing, the whole social experience that goes into a
performance, I always need time to decompress afterward.”
While
there may not seem to be much of an intersect in a Venn diagram that consists
of laboratory science in one set and writing and performing music in the other
set, but there’s no doubt that the confidence gained and the reaction achieved
from performing in front of a live audience has helped color Juavinett’s love
of trying to reach people with science as well.
“I don’t feel like there’s a ton of things crossing
over between science and music,” she said with a laugh. “But one way these do
inform each other is the comfort of being in front of people and performing. I
feel very comfortable giving a scientific talk, I generally feel very comfortable
on stage and in front of people, and that comes from performing music in front
of people.”
Juavinett
is passionate about sharing science with as many people as possible. She has contributed
articles to numerous science websites including Massive Science, where you’ll
find a very relatable article about trying to find an obscure item at Home
Depot without having to spend all day explaining why you need it.
“It’s
funny, I think most scientists hate to write anecdotal pieces like that,” she
said. “Coming from a songwriting background, we recognize the power of telling
a story, so why can’t we do the same thing with science and science writing as
well? Not every neuroscientist goes into Home Depot and has the experience I
had, but people can relate to that mundane part of that.
“If
you can show that you care about something and you can tell a story people can
relate to, give it a different slant than people are used to, I think that can
be way more powerful than writing an article that says, ‘Genes are made up of
this…’ It’s about making a connection to people’s lives, and about stripping
down notions people have about how you can present science or how you can present
anything.”
Juavinett
has also worked with Guerilla Science, an organization dedicated to creating
entertaining and inspiring presentations and installations for cultural events
in an effort to connect people with science.
“Guerilla Science will bring science into unusual
spaces—music festivals, art festivals … they’ll pitch a tent, run science
programs, give talks or workshops. It’s really amazing, and everybody is able to
do a fun science project. I really like them, they keep sparking curiosity and
interest with people. It’s super fun to be involved with them.”
Wherever science and music take Juavinett in the
future, she believes they will always take her in front of crowds, either to
share her music, or to help spread her love of science.
“At the end of the day, that’s what I care the most
about,”
she said. “I’ve been trying to decide, do I want to stay in pure
research or do something bridging the scientific community with the rest of the
world. I care tremendously what is science and what it’s doing that can help
people understand their own lives a little better. The public doesn’t always
have access to this information, or the info is not always good. There’s a tremendous
gap between science knowledge and public knowledge. That’s something I’d like
to see evolve. Why not make that information available, bridge the scientific
and broader community?
“I
feel like I always need to be doing some type of outreach or engagement, that’s
ultimately what gives me meaning. I love research but I think the public
engagement side of things is becoming more important to me. I enjoy teaching,
too. I really enjoy public engagement. If I have some ability to do a mix of
those things moving forward, that would be really great.”
Note: Ashley Juavinett is not affiliated with AlphaBioCom and did not receive any compensation for agreeing to be featured in this article. We simply felt she had a fascinating story to tell and we were excited to share it. You can follow Ashley on Twitter here and her Facebook music page here.
