"My name is Andrew Crowther.
We're at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
I'm a graduate student in the neuro-biology curriculum.
So it was in high school I kinda was looking into how the brain functions.
I do not have any scientists in the family.
I think a lot of the creativity that my mother has has been passed down and has helped me
in science.
It incited a pursuit that has led me all the way to here.
We're looking at fundamental processes in brain development.
So there's neuron-degenerative diseases where the brain is wasting away to some extent.
And then there's also areas of traumatic brain injury where you have a brain injury.
So there's this concept that we can have regenerative therapies where we make more brain cells that
can recover the brain in general and maybe alleviate the symptoms of these diseases.
So our hope is that we have these stem cells we can put into certain areas of the brain
that are diseased and then foster their growth so that they then contribute to that brain
function that was lost.
We are now with technology advancing able to look and watch.
And when you watch there's a lot more data when you have a perspective like that.
We're headed to where we acquire images with the miniature microscope.
Usually epifluorescence microscopes are pretty table top wise and then this one has a camera
and a little tiny lens.
So we use that to image cells in real time.
They probably like it.
I'll show you some images acquired from the microscope.
We're using computers a tremendous amount and so I spend time at my computer where I'm
working on analyzing data and also looking at even fine details than we can look at just
by eye.
One of the characteristics of migration are present in this cell type that we're imaging.
This would be an example.
So up here is the time over hours of the imaging of the cells.
It's in a movie format because you're able to record over time and then we can take even
more intensive pictures of the cell.
We're looking at the side of the cell.
It appears that maybe one cell body which is a different color code because there's
more volume associated with it and then one thing that's surprising when we do the 3D
reconstruction we can image and see that appearingly one cell now has turned into two cell bodies.
This would be the birth of a nerve cell in the [unclear 00:02:46].
Cells are dynamic.
We weren't expecting them to be so dynamic.
They're looking and they're searching for something in their environment and when they
find it the cell body will move.
To make a connection between our daily experiences and cells that are moving in the brain has
not been linked before and if they are tied very closely this is very interesting and
likely contributes to important brain functions.
Do something like colorful and cool.
Everything at universities in general that I've experienced and people that are doing
research, if you go and ask them for help or for advice they're going to offer it.
I kind of enjoy working here, almost too much.
So everybody's thinking about translational medicine, how you apply basic research to
the medical side.
I'm very interested in having new therapies so that's my motivation.
The field in neuroscience specifically evolves very fast, rapidly, and so new minds work
with new technologies the best and they'll apply it different ways from what I could
even think of for younger people."