Postdoc Spotlight: Brain Navigation

Anant Jain, Ph.D., said he fell in love with science in high school after attending a biology lecture on the circulatory, respiratory and nervous systems. Yet, it was his studies in neuro-oncology at Harvard Medical School that cemented his passion to become a neuroscientist.

“Working with the world’s best scientists and doctors was a great opportunity,” said Jain, a postdoctoral fellow in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. “The experience was inspiring and really fostered my interest in pursuing higher studies to better understand brain physiology.”

Jain earned a bachelor’s degree in genetic engineering from the Sri Ramaswamy Memorial Institute of Science and Technology in India. He continued his education at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass., where he studied glioblastoma, an aggressive type of cancer that can occur in the brain or spinal cord. He also completed an internship at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Japan, in computational neuroscience researching neuronal connections in the brain. In 2019, Jain earned a doctorate in neuroscience from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., where he researched how the hormone estrogen affects the hippocampus, the region of the brain primarily associated with memory.

“I was truly excited and fascinated by the complexities that could occur in the brain,” Jain said.

Now Jain, as a postdoc fellow works in the laboratory of Ken Dawson Scully, Ph.D., professor in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, and Ryohei Yasuda, Ph.D., director in the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience. In their labs, Jain’s research focuses on spatial navigation and learning systems in the brain. He studies neurons in mice and how they change connections during learning of new places and environments. “One thing I learned early on as a researcher in my field was that I had to learn to be patient and perseverant,” he said.

To Jain, one of the most fascinating observations in his research is the connection between how brain cells change with experience and how it gives the brain a vast capacity to learn and remember different types of information, much like driving to the grocery store by using the metaphorical global positioning system in your brain. Comprehending those mechanisms of memory, Jain said, is the key to understanding several neurological disorders in which dementia is the most common symptom.

“By understanding the mechanisms of memory,” he said, “my research will aid in developing better diagnostic and therapeutic tools to treat neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease.”