Stories of Women in Neuroscience · Stories of WiN

Dr. Croxson

·1 hr 17 min·4 clips

At UCL, an interviewer kept asking “are you sure” until she started shaking.

Melissa Franch introduces Dr. Paula Croxon and frames the show around women in neuroscience. Paula says her interest in the brain started when she was very young. She loved science and music, and when college decisions came up, she chose science as her main path and kept music as a hobby. Neuroscience fit because it gave her room to stay curious. The episode follows her career in order, which matches the show's style. She talks about becoming an assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where she studied memory, neuroanatomy, and connectivity in the primate brain. One thread runs through the whole conversation: an early project using diffusion imaging. It took a lot of work, and the host keeps returning to what it actually showed. Paula says the technique was very good at picking up the likelihood of connections between prefrontal brain areas and the rest of the brain. It made the method look like a solid anatomical tool before the field had fully settled on that view. The other major finding was how similar human and primate brains were in their prefrontal connections. She notes that there were some small differences, especially around language areas. She later came back to that question in work with Christina Simonian on language-like areas. Paula also remembers a crowded poster session at her first Society for Neuroscience meeting. The attention made sense, since the work was ahead of where the field later went. The conversation then turns from methods to the habits that get a scientist through difficult work. Paula comes across as someone who keeps showing up. The host links that persistence to long-distance swimming, where endurance and support both matter. The episode closes on science communication and the idea that scientists should learn to explain their work clearly.

As heard by us

A clear career profile that ties diffusion imaging, primate neuroanatomy, and science communication together.

The episode tracks Dr. Paula Croxon from an early pull toward neuroscience to the choice to keep music on the side and let science take the lead.

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Why you'd press play

You want a scientist's path that starts with music and ends in primate brain maps.

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