Crespi News

Mason Gonzalez '27 was accepted to UCLA's Brain Research Institute's 2024 NeuroCamp Summer Program as the youngest high school student out of the 20 accepted applicants across Los Angeles. UCLA typically only selects 15-20 out of hundreds of applicants that apply each summer to the 2-week-long program.

Mason recounts his experience from the camp below:

"I had a great experience learning about Neuroscience and what it feels like to be a neuroscience student at UCLA. All of my instructors and teacher assistants were some of the kindest people I’ve ever met, and they constantly guided me, making my experience so much more enjoyable. This experience is one that I will always look back on as one that exposed me to the field of neuroscience. If I could, I would love to participate in another camp."

"On the first day, we dissected a sheep's brain and looked at the different parts by making our incisions and exploring the brain as a whole. I was excited when we held a real human brain which was heavier than I expected. The next thing we did was dissect a spinal cord and explore the intricacies of that. Then we tried to transfer a memory using worms. This process took a few days and started with us habituating a worm to light for an hour. We would put a light on a worm in a container for one minute to ensure it was moving or static every 15 seconds. Once the minute was over, we would do the same with no light. The worms that did habituate and gradually got used to the light, we dissected, mashed it up, and did a 15-step process to extract the RNA from the worm. We then repeated this RNA-extracting process with a worm that we did not habituate. Next, we injected 2 worms, one with the learner and one with the naive RNA. We then repeated the habituating process with both worms to see if we could transfer the light memory into a new worm. Lastly, we looked at slices of bird brains under a microscope."

Throughout the program, Mason and his peers engaged in different activities around the campus including a scavenger hunt which allowed them to work as teams outside the lab. He is extremely grateful for the opportunity being afforded to him and emerged from the camp with a profound appreciation for neuroscience.