Name: Ashley Henderson
Year in Program: G1
Hometown: My childhood home was in Itta Bena, Mississippi. I lived in California for 5 years before medical school began and my family now lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama!
Education: Stanford University B.S. in Biology with honors in Neurobiology
Past Research Experience:
04/2015 - 06/2018 Giocomo Lab at Stanford University
I worked on multiple projects in this lab, firstly investigating if grid scale (spacing of firing fields of grid cells in the MEC) changed when the HCN1 receptor was knocked out locally in the MEC and if this altered spatial navigation. My second project resulted in my honors thesis. I investigated the function of CA2 place cells. My findings showed consistent changes in place field size when a social stimulus was given and neural network responses similar to CA3. My final project during my gap year was to design an experiment to separate memory-based foraging from free foraging behaviors in rats on a controlled tree maze.
06/2014 - 08/2014 Bergmann Lab at Stanford
I worked on two separate projects in the summer. The first project analyzed regeneration in Arabidopsis in the absence of hormone treatment. The second project worked to identify the function of four genes with similarities to the Arabidopsis genes known as BASL.
01/2012 - 05/2012 Thornton Lab at Mississippi State
During my junior year of high school, I worked with a microbiologist at Mississippi State University, Justin Thornton, on a project involving Streptococcus pneumoniae. The goal was to isolate the pneumolysin-releasing gene on the Pneumococcus chromosome.
Current Research Interest: Neuroscience, Immunology, Gastrointestinal research
Current Medical Interest: My current interests in medical school are Neurology and GI.
Career Goal: My career goal is to become a physician scientist researching a disease relevant to the specialty I train in so I may improve the care available to the patients I treat in the clinic.
What makes you unique: I grew up on a catfish farm in the Mississippi Delta!
What makes me common: I really like cats and wine.