As a Hebrew University undergraduate, Roey Schurr chose to study physics and cognitive sciences. While participating in a research project at Hadassah, seeking neurological markers for psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (psychologically induced seizures), he realized he was hooked on the brain. His next step was a no-brainer: he enrolled in the graduate program at the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences (ELSC).
Incoming ESLC graduate students undergo an intensive year and a half study program before joining a lab and developing their own research projects. At the end of this period, Roey was most fascinated with what science least understood: white matter, the nerve fibers that connect and transmit information between different regions of the brain.
Roey enthusiastically joined Prof. Aviv Mezer’s lab, researching non-invasive ways to map the white matter tracts in the human brain using quantitative MRI scans. To this end, he utilized computational tools to combine information about the diffusion of water molecules and the amount of myelin, the insulating substance that enwraps the white matter fibers. This integrative approach proved extremely useful in increasing the accuracy of existing methods for mapping white matter.
Roey and Prof. Mezer demonstrated their method worked on one tract, then another, and then another. The potential implications of their groundbreaking findings are manifold: improving surgery on epilepsy patients, uncovering how brain structure supports brain function in healthy people, and shedding light on the structural abnormalities in conditions involving white matter, such as dyslexia or multiple sclerosis. By generalizing their method to conventional MRI scans, it can be applied in any lab.
After completing his doctoral research, Dr. Schurr undertook another project in Prof. Mezer’s lab: studying white matter in postmortem brain tissue using Nissl-stained slides. For 140 years, Nissl staining was used almost exclusively to study neurons in the cortex. Roey demonstrated that these slides contain troves of information about the brain’s white matter – hidden in plain sight. This finding opened up endless opportunities for further research, as Nissl-stained slides are prevalent in labs worldwide. Dr. Schurr and Prof. Mezer published their findings in Science magazine in late 2021, just as Roey began his postdoctoral research at Harvard.
“Hebrew University and ELSC provide a challenging environment, in every sense. There is so much to learn, with research in so many fields. But we also challenge each other – at seminars, someone always challenges, critiques, and asks the speaker difficult questions. This is how science advances. Not by politely agreeing, but by challenging each other to be the best scientists we can be.”