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Comment by the_only_law | Hacker News Reader

Sometimes I wish I was smart enough to have gotten involved with things like neuroscience. I watched part of a lecture on certain brain functions a good while back, regarding the mechanics of various mental illnesses, and it was incredibly fascinating. Such a powerful organ that we simply can't understand well enough.

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You probably are smart enough. It’s never to late to learn and contribute.

This is true. I pivoted from EE to Neuroscience after several years in industry.

How did you manage that? Graduate degree in the field? I dont have a bachelors degree so thats probably the biggest hurdle for me (and I've run the number several times I cant afford to go back). Even in support roles I imagine the culture of the companies in the field place a lot of weight on academic credentials.

The easiest path for you would be to get a job as a tech in a neuroscience lab. Virtually every lab needs motivated help, and while those jobs may not pay super well, you can learn a LOT and get powerful rec. letters from well known scientists. Those should matter in the application process, especially as we've seen a trend of deemphasizing grades and GRE's (many schools don't even take GREs anymore).

I was very lucky, but also had already received a BE and an MS, then worked for two years in industry before applying to PhD programs.

How do you feel your daily neuroscience work is more interesting to you than your previous EE work? The brain fascinates me and sometimes I think of a similar change.

I'm working to develop novel brain recording technologies to create brain machine interfaces. I get to use all of my EE background, but apply it to problems at the interface of basic neuroscience and medicine.

My goal is to develop better neural interface technologies to both learn about how the brain works, and also to deliver therapies for patients with conditions like paralysis or psychiatric disorders.

happy to chat - feel free to email me: etrautmann at gmail dot com

to answer more specifically, the pivot from EE to neuroscience was motivated by the applications. I felt as a EE that I had a lot of tools in search of an application I really cared about. In industry, I was frequently applying those skills to disparate problems, but without a long term aim I was highly motivated to pursue.

did you pay for your Neuroscience degree out of pocket>

I applied to PhD programs, all of which should have a stipend and cover tuition. I was very lucky in where I ended up, and while my pay dropped a lot from an industry engineering job, I was still able to live comfortably by my standards for the duration of my degree. I'm now a postdoc, which still pays poorly relative to alternate options, but that's not why I do what I do. It's a privileged position to be in, and likely does constrain my thinking about starting a family, etc. but works well enough for me. Postdocs should be paid more across the board, however.

I agree. Even a minor contribution is more meaningful than you'd think.

You are definitely smart enough. The problem is that most neuroscience is extremely incremental and often boring/useless. People like the idea of "working with the brain", but since we have no idea what we're doing, they just end up doing the 237th paper on the regions whose activity is "modulated" by the hippocampus, etc., etc.

There's a lot wrong with the structure of science, and this does lead to some incrementalism, but at the end of the day, we are making huge breakthroughs and our progress in understanding the brain is accelerating.

Do you happen to have a link to that video? Sounds really interesting.

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