Rachel Smith joins MULTINET

I’m Rachel and I’m a PhD candidate with a background in cognitive neurobiology. During my Master’s degree, I spent a lot of time in the lab studying the neurobiological basis of complex behaviours, such as learning and memory, by directly recording neuronal activity in awake, behaving animals. I loved this work and found it fascinating, but I knew that I wanted to study something more clinical. I am therefore very excited to do my PhD in the MULTINET lab, where I will be able to use my lab experience in a more clinically focused way.

In my PhD, I will be working together with Dorien and Iza to study the neurobiological basis of chemotherapy-related cognitive impairment. Current research suggests that chemotherapy-rleated cognitive impairment is associated with reduced brain connectivity because oligodendrocytes (the cells that make up myelin) are particularly susceptible to the negative effects of chemotherapy. We want to build a better picture of how this happens by measuring multiple outcomes from the microscale (oligodendrocyte and myelin health) all the way up to the macroscale (MRI outcomes and cognitive performance). The eventual goal of the project is to test possible treatment strategies that may protect oligodendrocytes agains the negative effects of chemotherapy and thus reduce its impact on cognitive performance.

I am really excited to be joining the MULTINET lab because it is such a multidisciplinary team with a huge amount of experience in different fields. Also, because my background is not in clinical neuroscience, I am excited to learn about the projects of other team members and see things from a new perspective.