Student Spotlight: Esperanza Barrios (Neuroscience)

 

Esperanza Barrios is pursuing a Neuroscience major with minors in transdisciplinary studies and chemistry.

 

“Esperanza’s research is particularly inspiring because she is reaching beyond her major area of study to incorporate one of her passions, and we can see how the marriage of these seemingly disparate areas can produce fascinating research questions and discoveries.” – Dr. Marlisa Santos, NSU Faculty Mentor

 

Highlight how you got involved in research, any research programs you were a part of, any prior research experiences, difficulties that you overcame, etc.

I had been doing neuroscience research before getting interested in doing an honors thesis. I got involved in neuroscience research because I wanted to try to be in a lab setting to determine if I liked being in research. Well, it turns out that I really liked the idea of being alone and working on my analysis and reading journal papers. Once I knew that I wanted to do an honors thesis, I knew that I wanted to focus it on human motivation and what’s considered to be ‘sinful’ or better yet, criminal behavior. A friend of mine had Dr. Marlisa Santos as a professor and hearing about her from my friend, I found out that she seemed like a good choice to be my advisor since she seemed to be into the same interests as myself and mythology, which is a component of my research.

Before the start of the school year, I was able to get my proposal approved by Dean Nevins which was an awesome milestone to starting the paper. Throughout this semester, Dr. Santos and I have been able to dive deep into and explore the full extent of my topic. Another fun accomplishment was that Dean Nevins provided me with the amazing opportunity of presenting my proposal to honors students who are interested in doing an honor’s thesis. This was an incredible feat for me since it technically was my first ever presentation on my research to a big audience.

 

What research are you currently working on?

Sin is a concept that is always viewed from a religious perspective. But, through Paradise Lost, John Milton was able to bring further understanding towards committing what’s perceived as sinful behavior without the veil of religion glazing over academic understanding. By focusing on the motivation of the three main characters of Paradise Lost and analyzing them within the context of an inferiority complex, this research will bring forth a better understanding on human nature and their motivations towards committing what’s perceived to be sinful acts or behaviors. Adam, Eve, and Satan are characterized as having some sort of power struggle for control in their life, a sin, causing them to do sinful behavior but which they justify as being a necessary action to break away from their glass prison of free will. Their motivations tend to be justified in the self, as to not have a guilty conscience. This analysis will evaluate how individuals with inferiority complexes drive their motivations towards committing sinful acts and then justify their actions as a ‘means to an end’ without remorse or knowledge that their behaviors can have consequences on themselves or others.

 

What made you interested in the type of research you are currently working on?

I had wanted to do some research in the humanities area. Since I’m a STEM major, I normally can’t indulge in my hobbies of reading literature and analyzing books. It’s mostly reading science articles and research papers which I love, but I really wanted to explore how the humanities department goes about doing research. So, I decided to incorporate the two areas I love which are literature and psychology, mostly focused on dark human behavior. I had done a research paper on Paradise Lost back in high school but I wasn’t able to go as deep into the analysis as I had wanted to so I decided that book would be the one I would focus on. Having decided on my book, I knew I wanted to analyze the three main characters, but I didn’t know that it would get to the point of analyzing sinful or criminal derived behavior. That was the fun part about thinking through the proposal because so many interesting things kept on popping up and I found out that I really like the area of dark psychology.

 

What made you decide to work with your current research mentor?

I never had Dr. Santos in a class, but a friend of mine did and she always said great things about her, and when I heard that her office was filled with Medusa portraits and small carvings, I knew I wanted to speak to her. I am a big mythology geek, so I wanted to learn a bit more. Originally, I first met her when my friend and I decided to participate in the Crossroads conference focusing on a presentation on analyzing femme fatales of two books , Circe by Madeline Miller and The Book of Lilith by Robert G. Brown. From the beginning, Dr. Santos was a blast to talk to and get to know her; some of our interests lined up so when I came up to her to talk about my topic and how I would love to have her be my advisor, she automatically said yes.

 

How does this work relate to your future career goals and what do you plan to do next?

Interestingly, my topic didn’t really line up to anything I wanted to do career-wise since I wanted to be a doctor but after researching so much on my topic, I found a new PhD area named neuroanthropology of ethics which lines up with all my interests. So now, you can say that doing this research really helped open new possibilities for me quite literally. Now I’m interested in doing an MD/ PhD so that I can still become a doctor focusing on neuroendocrinology since women’s health has piqued my interest based on my neuroscience research but I would also like to obtain a PhD to continue this interdisciplinary interest of mine because I truly think that reading books and analyzing their characters can give us an opportunity to understand humans more even if we don’t think that’s possible.

 

How has NSU helped you pursue and/or achieve personal and professional goals you have set for yourself? Any specific NSU resources used that you would like to mention?

I truly believe that NSU has helped me pursue all my professional goals and even open possibilities that I wasn’t aware of or that I didn’t even think were possible for me. I can say for myself that I’ve been able to explore all my interests to the fullest and I think I’ll leave NSU with a good idea of what I want to do next opposed to when I started that I was constantly worried of not finding my ‘passion’ per se . I absolutely loved interlibrary loan. It helped me access any articles I needed, and they always found the ones I was in desperate need of

 

What advice do you have for other students interested in getting involved in research?

I would tell them to start looking early one and start making conversation with prospective professors early on in their freshman year. I think it’s important to have a conversation with them before asking them fully because you must know what you’re getting yourself into. If you find out during the conversation that their research isn’t as interesting as you initially thought, that’s totally okay. But once you have a professor you want to do research for, email them immediately. Even if they don’t know you that much, you’ll get to know each other by working together. Overall, you can’t be timid; once you know it’s something that you want to pursue, you should go for it. At the end of the day, you won’t lose anything from talking or asking the professor to work together. The worst they can say is no.