Trevor D
- Research Program Mentor
PhD candidate at University of California Berkeley (UC Berkeley)
Expertise
Neuroscience, Genetics, Biology, Probability, Statistics
Bio
My name is Trevor Docter. I graduated from Columbia University in 2017 with a degree in behavioral neuroscience and immediately started a master's degree in medical neuroscience at the Charite Medical University in Berlin, the top medical university in all of Germany. I am now a first year PhD student at Berkeley studying molecular and cellular biology focusing on neuroscience. Through all of my experience, I understand that the classes that are easiest to succeed in are the classes in which the teacher is clear and comprehensible. I work to ensure that for every subject I teach, I explain it in a clear, approachable, and understandable way so students can get excited about the content they are learning, rather than frustrated about the lack of clarity. I love teaching and tutoring because I love providing students the opportunity to engage with learning material in a different and more personal setting outside of the classroom. Away from the social pressures of the classroom, students have more freedom to ask questions and pursue the topics that truly interest them. I believe this freedom allows students to develop a more personal relationship with the material.Project ideas
Analyzing and Understanding Moisture Detection
Human tactile senses are rich and dynamic. By combining information about changes in temperature, chemical environment, and vibration and indentation stimuli, we can construct highly detailed and precise neural representations of objects. Our sense of discriminative touch is based in neurological responses to vibration and indentation stimuli. In our skin we have a wide array of different fiber types, each tuned to a specific stimulus type and intensity, that mediate our sense of touch. While many insects have hygroreceptors that allow them to perceive changes in humidity and moisture in their environment, without these receptors, humans are left to use cognitive processing to discern changes in moisture and wet from dry. Moisture requires sensory integration in the central nervous system and is an emergent sensation that occurs from the integration of inputs rather than a direct signal from the periphery (i.e. touch or heat). Moisture detection proves essential for sensing the world: texture discrimination, object grasping, or gait changes on slippery surfaces. The aim of this project is to understand the way our bodies interact with the physical world through touch. We will learn of the basics of neuroscience and a foundational understanding of our sense of touch. We will investigate how different neurons respond to different stimuli, how this code is transduced, and what properties of physics make this possible. Following this, we will work through the scientific method, analytic statistics, and experimental design. From there, you will write your own project proposal and emulate a laboratory to conduct home experiments to build a qualitative and quantitative understanding of how we detect varying moisture levels.