How I Became a Scientist: From Dancing to Science

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00:00:13;04 My name is Erich Jarvis. I'm an associate professor at Duke University Medical Center.
00:00:17;09 I'm also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.
00:00:21;02 I'm going to be talking to you today about why I became a scientist
00:00:27;13 and how I became a scientist.
00:00:29;10 Just to let you know, right now I run a laboratory
00:00:32;15 that roughly has anywhere from 15 to 20 persons,
00:00:38;20 depending on the semester, and we study brain pathways for vocal learning.
00:00:42;14 But that's not how I began.
00:00:45;07 I grew up in New York City, mostly in the Bronx and Queens,
00:00:50;04 and I grew up in a family that came from diverse economic backgrounds,
00:00:55;19 from being relatively poor, middle class, and we always were told to have a dream in life,
00:01:03;29 to make your life better, to do something important.
00:01:08;08 But, most of my family was into the performing arts, particularly on my mother's side.
00:01:12;03 And so, we were all dreaming to be famous artists, singers, dancers, and so forth.
00:01:20;26 And, to do this with a passion. And so, when I was a youngster in elementary school
00:01:30;27 and eventually going to high school,
00:01:32;12 I auditioned for the high school of performing arts and got to be a dance major there.
00:01:37;25 And then also was at the Joffrey Ballet School in New York City
00:01:43;21 and the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, and I was pushing along to be a serious dancer.
00:01:48;09 And I would dance 6 hours a day --
00:01:51;05 three hours at school, three hours at once of these dance schools --
00:01:56;11 and, in between, would have academic classes
00:01:58;08 like math, biology, reading, writing, and so on.
00:02:04;06 At some point, towards the end of my high school years,
00:02:07;03 I started really thinking about, "Is this really the career I want to pursue?"
00:02:12;10 And I was doing ok. For instance, my senior year, towards the end of that year,
00:02:19;00 I was asked to audition for Alvin Ailey Dance School.
00:02:22;22 I mean, the Company.
00:02:25;06 I was asking myself, "What do I really want to do in life?"
00:02:28;14 I started asking that question because my mother always said to me,
00:02:32;03 "It doesn't really matter what you do."
00:02:33;27 "What's most important that what you do, you do it well."
00:02:37;04 And, she would then add that,
00:02:39;18 "I'd like you to do something that has a positive impact on society."
00:02:42;15 And I thought, "What can I do that has a positive impact on society?"
00:02:47;14 I felt I could do that better as a scientist than I could do that as a dancer.
00:02:52;19 So, at my senior dance concert, right at the end of the dance concert,
00:02:57;26 I'm making this decision here, and I said,
00:03:00;01 "You know what, I'd like to go ahead and be a scientist."
00:03:02;22 And I didn't have any scientific background or training at all.
00:03:05;12 I had biology classes, which I really liked.
00:03:07;24 So, I applied to different colleges, got into Hunter College,
00:03:12;08 and actually had to take remedial courses
00:03:15;09 because they said I wasn't prepared enough to take the advanced academic classes.
00:03:20;21 So, I took a summer of remedial classes, and then really started
00:03:26;05 intensively studying biology and mathematics, like I was studying dance.
00:03:31;01 And the reason why I was studying biology and math
00:03:33;14 is because I felt I wasn't sure if I really liked biology better
00:03:38;03 (or, let's say, that is the understanding of how biological organisms work)
00:03:44;10 or the origins of the universe.
00:03:45;27 Those are my two major interests.
00:03:48;01 So, I decided to do both.
00:03:49;12 And I thought math would actually help me think better.
00:03:52;14 So, then, after my first year, I got into a program that helps under-represented minorities
00:04:01;17 get into scientific research.
00:04:04;11 And this was a great advantage that I discovered later offset
00:04:08;18 a disadvantage that I had that I didn't realize many other people had.
00:04:11;27 And then, I really worked with a passion in the lab.
00:04:15;15 I would sometimes spend the night in the lab,
00:04:17;11 do experiments on the weekends, on the holidays.
00:04:20;15 And, people would call up, "Where is Erich? Where is Erich? Where can we find him?"
00:04:24;18 In the lab. That's where he was.
00:04:27;00 And I fell in love with doing scientific research in the lab, like I did as a dancer.
00:04:34;04 And people often ask me, "Well how did you make that switch?"
00:04:38;14 "Aren't those two different fields very different?"
00:04:40;13 And I discovered at the time that no, they're not.
00:04:43;10 Both of them require a lot of discipline.
00:04:46;23 Both of them require a lot of hard work.
00:04:49;22 Both of them require acceptance of failure.
00:04:53;09 That is, you have do a choreographed dance over and over and over again
00:04:58;25 until you get it right, just like an experiment.
00:05:01;25 Sometimes, if you submit a paper for a publication, it gets rejected.
00:05:05;03 Sometimes, you go for an audition, you get rejected.
00:05:08;14 So, you have to learn how to accept rejection and try over again.
00:05:12;06 And, importantly, both of them require a good level of creativity.
00:05:18;03 As an artist, you need to be creative to have your art be appreciated by others,
00:05:26;17 you need to come up with something new.
00:05:28;12 Same thing for science. You need to be creative to understand how nature works.
00:05:34;07 And so, to me, dance and science was a natural merge of two different fields.
00:05:41;08 Then, when I was at Hunter College, where I did my undergraduate
00:05:48;27 scientific research and also academic training,
00:05:52;26 I decided, "What do I want to do particularly within science for my future career?"
00:05:58;14 And I decided, "You know what? I really am interested in two questions."
00:06:03;12 One is the origins of the universe, and the other is how the brain works.
00:06:08;28 And, in trying to choose between those two, I chose to study how the brain works.
00:06:15;15 Why? Because I felt it was more rooted in my dance background.
00:06:19;21 That is, more rooted in something here in the Earth.
00:06:22;01 And, as a result of that, I applied to different graduate schools,
00:06:26;28 and I got into a number of them because,
00:06:29;08 from all the hard work I did as an undergraduate student,
00:06:32;03 I was able to publish 6 papers in scientific journals,
00:06:35;16 either as first author papers or collaborative papers with others in the lab.
00:06:40;05 And that helped me become competitive
00:06:42;08 to get into some good graduate school programs.
00:06:44;05 And I was trying to decide, do I want to do an MD-PhD or a PhD
00:06:48;10 to answer this question about brain function?
00:06:50;27 And I decided on the PhD because usually the PhDs are the folks
00:06:57;01 who actually make the discoveries to understand how things work
00:06:59;29 or the cures for diseases.
00:07:01;21 So I went to Rockefeller University,
00:07:04;14 as a graduate student, and I began to study the songbird brain,
00:07:09;28 and discovered genes that are regulated in those areas
00:07:14;11 that either control the neural circuits for forming learned vocalizations,
00:07:21;06 or at least producing them.
00:07:24;00 And, to make a long story short, to skip a number of years later
00:07:28;29 to now being an associate professor at Duke University Medical Center,
00:07:34;24 teaching medical students on how the brain works,
00:07:37;28 I recently discovered with my collaborators
00:07:42;13 that the brain pathways that control vocal learning abilities
00:07:45;29 are embedded within brain areas that control motor and sequenced behavior,
00:07:52;13 including potentially learning how to dance.
00:07:54;24 And so now, I'm actually coming full circle to bringing my scientific career
00:07:59;19 and my former dance training together because those two brain circuits
00:08:04;20 seem to be related to each other.
00:08:06;13 And I hope in the future to discover what that relationship really is.
00:08:10;14 And I think the answer is going to tell us how brain pathways
00:08:14;20 for complex circuits evolved in general.
00:08:17;12 And this would be a natural, nice merging of art and science.

This Talk

Speaker: Erich Jarvis

Audience:

General Public
Educators of H. School / Intro Undergrad
Student
Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
Researcher
Educators

Recorded: April 2012

Talk Overview

From dancing to science: As a promising young ballet student, Jarvis thought he would pursue a career as a dancer. After considering how he might best serve society, however, Jarvis decided to become a scientist. He has now come full circle with his work on songbirds suggesting a link between the areas of the brain involved in vocal learning and those involved in coordinated movements such as dance.

Speaker Bio

Erich Jarvis

Erich Jarvis was a high school student at the School of the Performing Arts in New York City. Upon graduation, he had to choose between continuing as a dancer and becoming a scientist. He chose science. Jarvis pursued his undergraduate degree at Hunter College where he found that the discipline and creativity of his dance… Continue Reading