Week 1:
Welcome to Mayo Clinic

June 11, 2022

Hi! My name is Makayla Kelleher! I’m a rising senior majoring in behavioral neuroscience at Cornell College. This summer I have the wonderful opportunity to intern at the Center for Sleep Medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota! I’m excited to start working on this summer’s project and to learn more about sleep!

Before I share what this past week had in store, I think it’d be worthwhile to share some of what led me to this internship. I am quite a fan of the hippocampus (i.e. learning and memory) with special interests surrounding the functions of the limbic system (i.e. behavior and emotion) and the perirhinal-entorhinal cortices (i.e. object recognition and mapping). These brain regions are at the core of what makes you… you!

After undergraduate, one of my academic goals is to attend a graduate school. I aspire to work toward receiving my Ph.D. in cognitive or behavioral neuroscience. My career goals include becoming a professor and teaching, conducting research in the psychology field, and becoming a published researcher. It has been brought to my attention that this internship has the potential to fulfill the latter of those goals!

I knew this internship would be challenging, inspiring, and rewarding. This past week alone has been all of the above! My fellow interns and I have already completed upwards of 8 hours worth of lecture and spent significant time practicing our new scoring skills. Our spare time during the day has been just as busy as our work time. We have completed orientation modules, read articles, ventured around Mayo Clinic’s Campus, and learned a great deal of Mayo Clinic history.

Luckily, we have great leaders pointing us in the right direction. Paul Timm is Dr. St. Louis’s research program coordinator. His expertise and welcoming nature have made the transition to Mayo Clinic very smooth. Olivia Cesarone is a returning member of Dr. St. Louis’s team. Her experience last year has made her the perfect person to ask any question.

Every day this past week has been insightful. We meet at 9 am in the windowless Reading Room. Thankfully, the conference room is filled with sunshine! Being on the 17th floor provides the best view of Rochester and adjacent landmarks like St. Mary’s Hospital. In the Reading Room, everyone has their own computer to work on. This week, we all learned how to score 30 second epochs for a RSWA (REM Sleep Without Atonia) sleep study. At first it was a bit overwhelming because I had never analyzed waves before! I caught on quickly and am now able to distinguish tiny muscle movements! Learning how to navigate the software, HypnoLab, and completing training files has been one of the biggest accomplishments of the week.

There are a handful of theories of sleep. Some suggest sleep contributes to memory consolidation, brain growth, and brain cleanliness and organization. If cleaning activities during sleep are lacking, a build-up of glymphatic toxins start to grow. Dr. St. Louis is particularly interested in the connection between RSWA and synucleinopathies like Parkinson’s Disease. For this summer, Dr. St. Louis is interested in looking further into narcolepsy, a sleep condition where drowsiness and sudden sleep occur. More to come on this topic as we get into the project!

In lecture this week we learned a lot. One of the most necessary pieces of information to understand comes from my favorite area of the brain: the hippocampus! During REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, hippocampal replay occurs. It’s suggested that memories with strong emotions attached to them are replayed in a dream. Dr. St. Louis mentioned that intense emotions like anger or fear might cause some of the actions seen during a RSWA episode. Without atonia (paralysis of the body) punching, kicking and excessive movements can occur. Left untreated, these actions can be harmful and dangerous to the individual and even their bed partner.

In the coming weeks, I am looking forward to starting Dr. St. Louis’s journal club! I am also excited to complete all of the training files and take The Gold Standard. After taking this test we will be able to work on the project! Even more so, Paul and Olivia have been very generous with their praise of us. We have surpassed their expectations by a few weeks! Because of our progress, a second research idea has been tossed to the group if we are able to finish the first project.