Research internship in Tromsø, Norway

Nor­way has fasci­nated me for a long time, both be­cause of its im­pres­sive land­scape and its strong re­search insti­tu­tions. At the Uni­versi­ty of Trom­sø, I had the op­por­tunity to work on two excit­ing pro­jects. In the first pro­ject, we inves­tigat­ed how the brain's adaptability changes with age. I con­duct­ed an exper­iment in which young and older sub­jects were asked to fol­low an object on a moni­tor with the cursor while the mouse con­trol was changed (e.g. the cursor moved to the right when the mouse was moved for­ward). The aim was to ana­lyse dif­fer­ences in the speed of adap­tation be­tween young and older peo­ple. 

The sec­ond pro­ject fo­cused on im­prov­ing diffu­sion tensor imag­ing (DTI), an MRI tech­nique for recon­struct­ing nerve fibres in the brain. With in­creas­ing age, fluid accu­mula­tions out­side nerve cells can dis­tort the MRI signal. We worked on a meth­od to auto­mati­cally iden­tify this fluid and re­move it from the scans with­out alter­ing the tissue signal in order to in­crease the accu­racy of nerve recon­struc­tion.

My time in Trom­sø was not just about work and re­search. I ex­plored the land­scape and met peo­ple from all over the world. At the uni­versi­ty, I formed friendships that went far be­yond the of­fice. We went climb­ing, hik­ing, and camp­ing. For the first time in my life, I went on a ski tour and played pick­leball. All these expe­rienc­es great­ly en­riched my eve­ryday life and showed me how valu­able it is to try new things and em­brace the un­known.

The in­tern­ship not only strengthened my scien­tific skills but also changed my per­spec­tive on the fu­ture. It clari­fied my desire to write my mas­ter’s thesis in the field of neu­robio­logi­cal imag­ing. Addi­tional­ly, I am now seri­ously con­sider­ing pursu­ing a PhD abroad. Look­ing back, my time in Trom­sø was not only an im­portant step in my de­velopment as an aspir­ing scien­tist but also a form­ative per­sonal expe­rience that opened up new per­spec­tives for me. (Link to the Elite Graduate Program “Translational Neuroscience”.)

Text: Dario Neuhaus, Elite Graduate Program “Translational Neuroscience”