Bethel to Boston
Professor Adam Johnson and four students earned NIH grant to conduct research on the brain.
By Karina Ritzman | Royal Report
Professor Adam Johnson sits in his clean bright office surrounded by pictures of Mother Theresa and bookshelves filled with neuroscience books. He spends his days teaching college students at Bethel University and researching the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory and emotion. But this summer, his Minnesota life is about to change — Johnson and four students from Bethel received a grant from the National Institute of Health to conduct research in collaboration with Boston University.
Professor Johnson spent his last couple of summers working on memory research. Research entails many costs, but Johnson says the idea of good research is that it will eventually pay for itself. Johnson and his team decided to involve students. They received push-back from the National Institute of Health because it does not like funding undergraduate programs for fear students will not stay in the program.
The research is a collaboration with Howard Eichenbaum, a professor at Boston University who is internationally renowned for his contributions to understanding the hippocampus and memory, and Marc Howard, who studies memory conceptualization. Johnson bridges those two worlds, taking the neural data and analyzing it to find patterns that can help scientists understand the human memory space.
Johnson, Eichenbaum and Howard decided that if they can fund students now, the experience will enable these students to understand exactly what graduate school is going to be, and make them strong candidates. Johnson believes students fail out of graduate programs because they are unprepared.
“Memory creates a framework for our imagination.” — Adam Johnson, psychology professor
In graduate school, Johnson was able to show that rats access their memory when making decisions.
“The goal of the grant is to try to figure out how memory functions and how it contributes to decisions. Memory creates a framework for our imagination,” Johnson said.
Students will be analyzing data with Johnson at Bethel for 10 hours a week. Then, in the summer, they will go out to Boston to work on the project on-site. Each student will receive free room and board and a stipend. The summer program lasts eight weeks.
“The idea behind cognitive psychology is that our brains are a computer, and if you give us certain kinds of information, we can’t process everything, and can only give limited answers.” Johnson said.
One way Johnson explains memory functions is trying a new ice cream flavor. If someone says it tastes just like strawberry or a familiar flavor, the human brain can imagine that flavor.
“Once you’ve had past experiences, you can make a solid connection with the new ideas, and make choices.” Johnson said.
“The way that human memory works is that we reconstruct our memories instead of retrieving them.” — Adam Johnson, psychology professor
The human brain constructs memories from what makes sense. This sometimes means it “fills in the blanks” with older memories.
“The way that human memory works is that we reconstruct our memories instead of retrieving them.” Johnson said.
Johnson says this grant allows Bethel students to have access to high-powered research that’s only available at major research universities. The type of systems that are needed for this kind of research is something that Bethel cannot offer on campus.
“Bethel is so good at educating and training our students, and making it so that they are bright, and prepared for the bigger world, but we’re just not equipped to offer the research opportunities,” Johnson said.
Bethel student researcher facts
Rachel Nordberg
-Sophomore
-First year on campus
-Part of PSEO program here last year
-From Big Lake, MN
-Neuroscience and psychology major
-Favorite thing about psychology: Learning more about God through brains, and how intricate and complicated he made them.
SOURCE: Interview
Boston University facts
-Scarlet and white are BU’s school colors. BU’s mascot is named Rhett because of the Gone with the Wind quote: “No one loves Scarlet more than Rhett!”
-Julianne Moore graduated from BU
-The Boston University bridge is one of the only three spots in the world where a plane can fly over a car driving over a train traveling over a boat.
-The Judson B. Coit Observatory is open to the public on Wednesday nights so that people can observe the constellations and night sky.
-In 1917, the Boston terrier became BU’s official mascot. Coincidentally, the Boston terrier was first bred in 1839, the same year that Boston University was founded.
SOURCE: AdmitSee
