Stories of Women in Neuroscience · Stories of WiN

Dr. Graziana Gatto

·50 min·1 clip

One 95-year-old neuroscientist's talk completely redirected my PhD.

Margarida introduces Dr. Graziana Gatto, professor of neurobiology of motor control at the University Hospital of Cologne in Germany. Her lab studies spinal cord circuits for sensory motor adaptation. Graziana says neuroscience was not her original plan. As a child, she expected to become a medical doctor and even pictured a future in cardiology. A high school shadowing program began to shift that view, and early research exposure helped her notice that her attention kept drifting toward how movement is controlled. She walks through the years that carried her from that early certainty into a scientific career. The conversation stays close to the choices that shape a researcher’s life. She talks about interviews, self-doubt, and the advice that helped her decide where she wanted to spend her postdoc and, later, her career. At one point she had to choose between the cortex and the spinal cord. She says the cortex is overrated for motor control, while the spinal cord feels central and still underappreciated. She also explains why the lab’s approach matters to her. Intersectional genetics gives the team a precise way to manipulate circuits, and the projects she discusses sit at the interface of sensation and action. The episode keeps returning to the same thread. Motor control is the topic that kept making sense, even when the path to it was uncertain. Graziana also talks about the realities of being a scientist. Technical difficulties are part of the job, and passion is what gets people through them. She mentions the value of talking with a PhD advisor and colleagues when a decision feels unclear. Outside the lab, she sounds candid about what restores her. She used to play soccer professionally, but now prefers art, building furniture, pottery, and learning German, with a little sarcasm attached to that last one.

As heard by us

A thoughtful career story about choosing the spinal cord and following the work that still feels compelling.

Dr. Graziana Gatto's conversation follows a recognizably human path into neuroscience: an early plan to become a doctor, then a slow turn toward motor control and the spinal cord as the work that held her attention.

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Why you'd press play

Hear how a childhood cardiologist dream led Dr. Graziana Gatto into motor-control neuroscience.

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