My name is Patrick Beukema.
I'm a graduate student researcher in the Center for Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh.
I study motor learning - in general, how we learn to perform exquisitely precise movements,
what parts of the brain are involved in that process- For example, shooting a free throw
or playing the piano, all of these are really relatively complex movements from the standpoint
of neuroscience, and so I study how the brain changes in order to facilitate the acquisition
of these complex skills.
My mother is a physician.
She's an anesthesiologist, and she loves it.
She would do medical missions.
She would talk to me about how young kids would have cleft lip or cleft palate, and
she would do the surgeries for them, so that was I think my motivation to begin with to
get interested in biomedicine initially, or medicine in general, and then sort of the
logical next step for me was to go into science research.
I think what got me into science initially, and why I've stayed in science, is it's really
sort of where I think a lot of the discoveries happen that end up, you know... helping people.
What's really fascinating to me is how much of our brain is dedicated to motor learning.
I think we're more used to thinking of the brain as able to solve these complex cognitive
problems, like for example a game of chess.
That's a very difficult game to learn and to become skilled at, but just moving the
pieces on the chess board also takes enormous training; it's just that we're so good at
it, we don't consider it this difficult problem that we need to overcome - we just sort of
automatically learn from when we're children how to, you know- move efficiently in the
world.
We've solved the problem of chess from an algorithmic standpoint - we can design computer
programs to beat the best chess player currently in the world - but we can't, or we have much
more difficulty designing robots to move the pieces on a chess board, and if you think
about the hierarchy of learning, you might expect that, you know- the actual game would
be more difficult to solve than just moving the pieces on the board - you know, physically
moving the pieces - but in fact, we've had more difficulty with the latter problem, which
is very interesting because that means that motor processes, motor learning, skill acquisition,
is an extremely complicated problem that the brain solves, and a lot of the neurons in
your brain are dedicated to making expert movements, and if we want to understand and
help design treatments and cures for people who suffer from motor diseases like Parkinson's
or Huntington's, then we better understand how the brain learns to make complex movements
in the first place.
I think the bottom line is when you think about the brain, it's hard not to be interested
in the brain, right, because it's how we experience the world, and yet once you start getting
into the neuroscience, getting into the study, you realize we really have very limited understanding
of a lot of complex phenomena, and that's, like, kind of shocking.
You know, like we experience the world as just a series of electrical impulses.
That's every single experience you've ever had is just a population of neurons firing,
which is kind of mind-boggling when you think about it.
You know, you think you're experiencing the world in real time, but you're not.
You know, you're experiencing the past, and it's just the result of electrical activity
in your brain, and the most fun aspects of being an academic or being a scientific researcher
is the joy of discovering something that no one has ever seen before or no one knew.
Being at the forefront - at truly, like, the cutting edge of what we know about how the
brain works - I think is one of the most cutting edge aspects of being an academic and being
a scientist.
You're surrounded by tons of really creative, really intelligent people who are basically
sort of united in a common goal, and so that makes for really exciting conversations.
I mean I'm surrounded by a great team here in my lab, and I think one aspect of science
that might be sort of missed in the media is that big discoveries and big innovation
is the result of, like, massive team efforts.
When you study science, you learn to look at the world in a different way - you know,
in a very vigorous, analytical, but also creative way.
In addition to all the career prospects you'll have and, you know- the exciting jobs you'll
have after you graduate, you'll have a perspective of the world that is really unique and priceless,
you know, in terms of appreciating the wonder, sort of, that is our natural world - and the
human brain, in my case - and I just think that that's priceless, I guess.