Neurology? Awesome. Neuroscience? Bleh.

[Groy]

Rising M3. Loving all aspects of neurology so far: lecture material/basic science (neuroanatomy, pathology, pharmacology), clinical science (neuro exam, localizing lesions, management of neurovascular and neurodegenerative diseases), ethics (discussing brain death determination, long-term management of disability), etc. It's all so enjoyable and interesting. I've even gotten involved in a few clinical neurology research projects and shadowed both IP and OP neurology, love all of it.

The part where I get hung up is interacting with people and topics in pure neuroscience. Whenever someone says they studied neuroscience as an undergrad and comes at me with their research on nuanced topics in "cognition, memory, sleep, neural networks, processing, fMRI, rats and reward systems, behavior, brain-computer devices, playing games on computers to improve XYZ", unless it has a very concrete and applicable clinical application, it rarely ever appeals to me, if at all. I'll read articles on glycemic control in post-tPA stroke patients all day, but if you ask me to read an article on mice stepping on buttons to get some cheese, I'm really not that interested. This may be a bit petty or arrogant, and I know that many developments in neurology have been driven by neuroscience/neuropsych research.

Another part of it may be due to my own personal experiences/biases with individuals in each of these fields. Neurologists I've met (both at my own institution and others) have seemingly all been welcoming, respectful, kind, knowledgeable, a bit quirky (even lovably schizotypal), and always encouraging to me as a student. I really gel with their personalities for some reason. Neuroscientists/PhD students I have interacted with have tended to be more arrogant, curt, impatient, and for some reason very outwardly politically vocal. I don't mean to cast aspersions on an entire field, I'm certainly not clinging to any so-called "stereotypes", these observations are rooted in nothing more than my own personal experiences. Every Neuroscience PhD and student I've met has been brilliant and hard-working, and I'm sure I've just had a bad draw.

I'm really not sure why I feel these feeling of disinterest and discomfort with neuroscience or its constituents, or if these feelings bode poorly for me in the context of pursuing a career in neurology. Is this a bad thing? I'm sure the fields overlap alot more in the academics settings, but I don't know to what degree. Not sure how much time neurologists or neuro residents spend reading or discussing interesting or novel advances in the pure neurosciences, but if it's alot, I don't know how I'd feel about that...

Sorry for the rant, if anyone is offended by this, I certainly meant no harm.

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[clausewitz2]

Most of the things you mention disliking are cognitive neuroscience, aka a kind of psychology. What is your feeling about the psychiatric comorbidities of neurological disease?

Also, it sort of just sounds like you just don't like basic science. Nothing wrong with that, that's why you went to the trade school that is a medical education rather than 4-7 years dedicated entirely to teaching you how to play the research game.

Research is a fairly cutthroat world, the grad students are like that for a reason. There are a lot of big fish in a shrinking pond. As someone once pointed out, academic squabbles are so vicious because the stakes are so small

 

[Groy]

disliking are cognitive neuroscience, aka a kind of psychology

That sounds about right.

What is your feeling about the psychiatric comorbidities of neurological disease?

I find psychiatric manifestations of neurological pathologies (and vice versa) to be very fascinating, especially when there are demonstrated therapies available for both. While I have only seen it a few times, watching the gradual resolution of a behavioral disturbance related to a neurological condition is amazing. I appreciate how closely these two great fields overlap, and I have observed a few wonderful psychiatrists at my institution.

There are a lot of big fish in a shrinking pond...academic squabbles are so vicious because the stakes are so small

I certainly don't blame them since that's the environment they live in, I'd think that having a hard shell (to continue the aquatic analogy) could only help in such a competitive profession. I certainly wouldn't avoid working with these folks, but our personalities seem largely incongruent, which I feel would get tiring over the long term.

Thanks for your take, I know there are good and not so good personalities in every profession, and even within a single discipline, personalities can vary widely. I'm sure most neuroscience folks are amazing! Maybe I just need to worry less about other people, and if I do decide to pursue research at any capacity, just to do it in topics that I enjoy. Just wanting to know if/how much of my attention has to be directed to these types of topics.

 

[MudPhudHopeful]

I'm sorry for your bad experiences with the neuroscience PhD types. It may just been the culture of the neuroscience department at your school. The neuroscience folks at my institution during grad school were all very down-to-earth and overall much more chill than the medical students as a whole.

Ultimately, though, don't let it bother you. It's perfectly fine to enjoy the clinical aspects of neurology. Actual clinical neurology requires very little basic neuroscience knowledge and you won't need to delve into those topics unless you want to do basic research. The topics you will learn about in residency are likely all the topics that you enjoy.

 

[Thama]

I'll second the PhD students being more chill than med students. The med students at my institution are largely arrogant gunner types that tend to wildly overestimate their own knowledge and resist feedback tooth and nail. Meanwhile the PhD students and postdocs I know are generally more laid back and humble, and have a much better grasp on the limits of their own knowledge base.

That said, the farther into your training you get, the less you need to interact with non-clinical neuroscience. Even if you are an academic clinician, if you don't have a lab then your only interaction with basic neuroscience may be an hour or so whenever your department grand rounds invite a basic scientist to speak.