flexible thing is a term people often
use to refer to a child’s ability to
think about things in a different way
and it’s essential for true learning
right being able to learn something in
one context and then apply it another
but flexible thinking becomes
increasingly difficult as we gain
expertise as we become experts it’s
really hard to break our focus and
challenge the conventional views in our
work this is true in all disciplines but
you should know that I am a
neuroscientist so by definition my job
is to study the function and dysfunction
of the nervous system and I do all of
this in mouse models of neurological
disease so I’m really coming at this
from a scientific view and in theory
science should be the pinnacle of all
flexible thinking it’s our entire job as
scientists to gather and integrate
information in order to innovate but I
myself have had a long history of
conventional thinking however I’ve also
had the experience of being a flexible
thinker and I found this much much more
rewarding see for the past three years I
studied a childhood neuromuscular
disorder called spinal muscular atrophy
and in that disease a special type of
neuron in the spinal cord called a motor
neuron it dies and the job of the motor
neuron is to send signals out from the
spinal cord to our muscles ultimately
allowing us to move and so pretty
clearly when that neuron dies those
signals are no longer being sent and
that leads to muscle weakness paralysis
and even death in the most severe and
youngest patients and this motor neuron
to muscle circuit it’s very delicate
very complex but understanding it is
really essential for understanding
what’s happening in neuromuscular
diseases
and as scientists we’re really good at
looking at this circuit in parts and
pieces or even really good at taking
snapshots of it over time and dead
tissue but we struggle mainly due to
technical difficulties on being able to
work with this circuit while it’s fully
intact and alive and therein lies my
problem I want to work with this circuit
while it’s intact and alive but this
circuit is very small it can’t be seen
without a microscope and the average
neuroscientist like myself is not going
to be able to dissect it out keep the
whole thing together and then also keep
it fully functioning so I couldn’t alter
the system that I had so I decided I
needed a new system now when you think
of neuroscience you probably think of
the brain and maybe even the spinal cord
but there’s nerves and neurons
throughout your entire body and
conventional thinking in neuroscience
would say if you want to study the brain
use the brain if you want to study
spinal cord wear motor neurons you
should probably use spinal cord motor
neurons but this time I had to go
outside of Convention and this time I
use the enteric nervous system this
beast of a nervous system in your gut to
study what was happening with the spinal
cord so what you need to know about the
enteric nervous system is that it has a
shit-ton of neurons a shit-ton nearly as
many as your spinal cord and there
fortunately for me most of them are
motor neurons which is exactly what I’m
looking for and they’re arranged in
these beautiful structures called
ganglion aided nerve plexuses they look
like a fishing net and then that is cast
out and sandwiched in between two muscle
layers and just like our spinal cord
motor neurons talk to our skeletal
muscles the motor neurons in the gut
talk to the gut muscles and they tell
them to contract and relax and they
ultimately say digestion and so if you
think about it this is perfect for me
I have the two elements I need motor
neurons connected to muscle but it gets
even better because what I haven’t told
you is that the enteric nervous system
can function largely without any input
from your brain that’s right you can
take the gut out of a mouse all the way
from the esophagus to the rectum which
is what you’re looking at here put it in
a dish
watch it wiggle around and keep it alive
for hours and if you think about it this
is perfect for me this is a solution to
my problem I have motor neurons that are
attached to muscle still and it’s alive
and functioning outside the body and
this is a system I can test on and this
is a system I can work in but I gained
something else from this project and it
besides just creating this model to
study the disease getting raw data from
this model and a really cool wiggly gut
video which is really cool and but that
was an appreciation for flexible
thinking so I had a problem and only
flexible thinking really led me to a
solution it allowed me to take something
old
so the enteric nervous system has been
around for our forever and use it in a
new way it allowed me to take what I
considered trash I studied the brain and
spinal cord who cared about the gut and
use it as my new treasure and so you
might be thinking what can flexible
thinking how does it apply to me what
can it do for me inflexible thinking the
very first thing it will do is it will
allow you to generate possibility so if
we think of other examples in science
say the scientists that are taking a
patient’s own skin cells and
transforming them to attack brain tumors
or even those growing organs human
organs outside of the body it helps for
transplant one day I think we can agree
that those people are really pushing
boundaries and generating possibility in
my own work Irie innovated a system we
already had to discover a new way a new
way of looking at neuronal function that
was previously too difficult
generating possibility the other thing
flexible thinking will do is
it will push you out of your comfort
zone and force you to learn a lot and so
again I studied the brain and spinal
cord the gut was an entirely new
territory very much out of my comfort
zone and to study it I really had to
take an interdisciplinary approach sure
I used neuroscience gastroenterology but
I had to throw in a pinch of pathology
in a sprinkle of microbiology to be able
to use a system correctly I was forced
to learn a lot and I was greatly
rewarded for that and you can think
about funny examples in science of
flexible thinking I mean who would have
thought a failed cardiac function drug
in combination with flexible thinking
serendipity and really great marketing
would have given us viagra and to some
that’s a miracle drug but maybe
but maybe your flexible thinking
experience won’t give you the next
miracle drug but what it will do is it
will improve the perspective of your
work no matter what that work is even
outside of science and it will inspire
others and so my ask of you today I
challenge you to really challenge your
conventional views see through them and
be aware remain aware that oftentimes
the very best ideas come from thinking
flexibly thank you [Applause]