Dr. Ronan da Silva is an HBHL Postdoctoral Fellow working at The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital) with Dr. Stuart Trenholm.
Ronan says that he's always wanted to be a scientist 鈥� at least after he 鈥減assed through the phase of 鈥業 want to be a soccer player." He was excited to study biology during his undergrad and felt that he could just could not learn enough. Eventually, he attended McGill's Integrated Program for Neuroscience for his PhD and subsequently his postdoc.
What鈥檚 your postdoc research?
My research is on the neurobiology of vision, studying how object recognition works at the level of neural circuits. Essentially, we want to understand how our visual system is capturing a video in real time of everything we do 鈥� walking on the streets, looking at your computer screen, and how our brain is able to extract information from the image that we are seeing to identify and assign labels to everything. We know how to do similar things using computer programs and that's how machine vision works, which is a hot topic these days. Although machine vision is largely inspired by neuroscience, we don鈥檛 really know how the brain does exactly the same thing. So, that鈥檚 essentially what we are studying 鈥� how information from a light stimulus becomes information inside the brain, and how we can identify things and assign labels.
Why did you choose McGill?
I chose to study at McGill because I already had an interest in neuroscience and Montreal is famous worldwide for being a great hub for studying neuroscience. McGill is the best school in the city for that. On top of that, Montreal is such an awesome place to live, so it鈥檚 a combination of a great study and work environment and a great city that is very fun to live in.
Do you have a plan for what you want to do after your post-doc?
Postdoc is a complicated process because we don鈥檛 know where we鈥檙e going to land and especially with how uncertain everything is in the world right now. I鈥檓 trying to not stick to one plan so much. My initial plan was to pursue a career in academia. As I mentioned, I love learning and I want to do something where I can be constantly learning for my whole life. I also love teaching and want to spread all the things that I learn. So for right now, I鈥檓 still thinking of academia, but we鈥檒l see how things develop.
What鈥檚 your favourite non-science activity or hobby?
I鈥檓 a big gamer聽鈥� I love video games. During quarantine I built myself a new PC, which I have been quite into and has made it much more interesting to stay at home. I also like cycling and coding a lot. So, these days I have been trying to put those things together by taking an online game programming course. I鈥檓 trying to think how I can apply that for my research as well, to figure out a game that our mice can play and use that as a tool.
What is your favourite thing about the brain?
I like everything that is pleasant in the brain. It鈥檚 kind of funny, because for my PhD I studied pain, which is intrinsically bad by definition. But it really got me interested in knowing what generates the good feelings inside of the brain. How is it that if I pinch my skin, it鈥檚 a mechanical stimulus that I don鈥檛 like but if I stroke my skin, it feels nice? What is the difference between those two things? Because of circumstances, I switched to vision from somatosensory systems, but I鈥檓 still curious to know how this pleasant vision works. Why is it that we see a painting and we think it's beautiful? Why do we see fireworks, which are just little pops of light in the sky, and say 鈥渨ow鈥�? My two passions about the brain are sensory systems and pleasant sensations.
