Damn It, Basal Ganglia

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Radiolab – "Damn It, Basal Ganglia"

Date: August 9, 2011
Hosts: Jad Abumrad, Robert Krulwich
Guest: Liza Schoenfeld

Main Theme & Purpose

This episode revolves around a surprising encounter between scientific research and personal experience. The story follows Liza Schoenfeld, a research technician studying the basal ganglia in mice, who experiences a bizarre and alarming loss of control over her own muscles during a crucial graduate school interview. The episode explores how scientific knowledge can become intimately personal, highlighting the strange and sometimes poetic overlaps between research and real life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction to the Basal Ganglia

• Basal Ganglia 101:
  • Liza explains, “So ganglia, you know, collections of neurons, big collections. So the basal ganglia is a fairly large part of your brain... responsible for controlling and coordinating movement.” (01:13)
  • The hosts quiz her on what actions require the basal ganglia (moving neck, winking, making expressions).

2. Mouse Experiments: Optogenetics and Movement Control

• Mouse as Puppet:
  • Liza details her lab’s use of optogenetics to control movement in mice, describing threading a fiber into the mouse’s basal ganglia and using light to control it:
    “Literally, we just shine lasers into mouse brains... We can get him to freeze in mid stride.” (02:18-02:33)
  • Robert marvels: “So you hit the laser, and boom, the mouse stops.” (02:36)

3. Liza’s Grad School Application Process

• The High Stakes:
  • Liza lists her ambitious choices (“Go big or go home.” (03:24)) and describes initial smooth interviews at top institutions.

4. Onset of Medical Crisis: The UCSF Interview

• Unusual Symptoms Appear:
  • A severe stomach flu precedes her UCSF interview. Liza takes an anti-nausea medication and, despite lingering symptoms, pushes ahead.
• Symptoms Escalate:
  • During her interviews, she describes:
    • A strange sensation of her glasses slipping and an uncontrollable tightening of muscles in her face.
    • Her head spontaneously turning to the right during lunch:
      “I would be trying to sit here and face you, and I would just turn over here and face Robert.” (05:50)
  • The symptoms develop into involuntary neck movement, eyebrow raising, and finally a painful, twisted smile:
    “...like a charley horse in your face.” (08:14)

5. Emergency Room Realization: Science Imitates Life

• Medical Emergency:
  • She loses control of her mouth and tongue, and her throat tightens.
  • As Liza is wheeled into the ER, she reflects on the frightening irony of struggling with the same brain area—basal ganglia—she manipulates in mice.
• Diagnosis:
  • The culprit is Compazine, the anti-nausea drug, which can, in rare cases (1–2%), disrupt dopamine systems in the basal ganglia and cause “acute dystonia,” precisely the symptoms she experienced:
    “That drug had been doing to her pretty much what she’d been doing to those mice.” (10:09-10:14)

6. Full Circle: Personal Empathy with Research Subjects

• Aftermath and Reflection:
  • Liza’s ordeal is resolved with Benadryl:
    “Within 20 minutes, I was feeling a lot better.” (11:09)
  • Liza expresses newfound empathy for her research subjects:
    “Now when I go into that room with a little laser, I go in now, and I just really empathize with them.” (11:28)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Humorous Science Banter

• On Basal vs. Basil:
  • Robert: “So basil is not the thing from which pesto is made in your case?” (01:17)
  • Liza (deadpan): “No.” (01:24)

Chilling Irony

• Mouse-Scientist Role Reversal:
  • Jad: “That drug had been doing to her pretty much what she’d been doing to those mice.” (10:14)
• Empathy for Mice:
  • Liza: “I empathize with them.” (11:28)

Painful, Surreal Interview Reality

• On Trying to Appear Normal:
  • Liza: “Imagine like a charley horse in your face. Yeah.” (08:14)
  • “I look surprised at everything I’m saying, and I can’t stop it.” (07:20)

Life-and-Death Five Minutes

• ER Crisis:
  • Liza: “I remember frantically sending messages like, you gotta cut this out now. But she wasn’t in control.” (09:44-09:55)
  • Robert: “So your basal ganglia are testing the San Francisco docs, and they are failing.” (10:45)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:54–01:39 – Liza explains what the basal ganglia does
• 02:05–02:43 – Mouse puppet experiments with optogenetics
• 03:14–03:24 – Liza lists the top grad schools she’s applying to
• 04:59–07:11 – Onset and progression of bizarre, involuntary symptoms during interviews
• 09:17–09:44 – Crisis peaks, rushed to emergency room
• 10:09–10:20 – Revelation: medication triggered basal ganglia chaos
• 11:28 – Liza’s newfound empathy for her mouse subjects

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Tone and Style

Warm, curious, lightly irreverent—Radiolab’s signature playful style shines through, balancing scientific explanation with personal story and a dash of irony.

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For Listeners Who Missed It

This episode is a fascinating, personal look at how science and life can intertwine in the most unexpected ways—turning a researcher's expertise into an emergency, and transforming the way she sees her lab work forever.

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Final Note

Liza is now a proud PhD candidate at the University of Washington, and both she and the mice are doing fine.

Transcript

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. All right.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

You're listening to Radiolab.

[Robert Krulwich]

Radiolab shorts from wnyc.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes, and npr. Hey, I'm Jad Abumran.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Krulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab, the podcast. Yes, and today on the podcast, we're gonna present a story that the whole.

[Robert Krulwich]

Thing is an accident. Really?

[Jad Abumrad]

This particular podcast, we were on tour a few months ago doing the symmetry thing in San Francisco, and right as we were there, we got an email from a woman who lives there telling us this nutty story.

[Robert Krulwich]

Something odd had happened to her, and she wanted to share it with us. So he met her in the lobby.

[Jad Abumrad]

I missed. I didn't hit the record button fast enough. Could you just tell me your name again?

[Liza Schoenfeld]

My name is Liza Schoenfeld, and I'm a research technician at the Glasses Institute at the University of California, San Francisco.

[Jad Abumrad]

Now, Liza is just getting started with her scientific career.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Finished my undergraduate degree about a year and a half ago.

[Jad Abumrad]

And this story takes place as she was about to take that next step after college and apply to grad schools.

[Robert Krulwich]

And the star of our story, other than, of course, Liza herself is a little mischievous. Part of her brain. Well, everyone's brain.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Part of your brain called the basal ganglia.

[Jad Abumrad]

Basal ganglia, which at the time, she'd.

[Robert Krulwich]

Been studying, just so we understand basal and ganglia. So basil is not the thing from which pesto is made in your case?

[Liza Schoenfeld]

No.

[Robert Krulwich]

What does basal mean?

[Liza Schoenfeld]

I'm gonna have to ask someone else about that.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay, let's go to. Go on to ganglia.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

So ganglia, you know, collections of neurons, big collections. So the basal ganglia is a fairly large part of your brain.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's actually this big hunk deep in.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

The center, and it's responsible for controlling and coordinating movement.

[Robert Krulwich]

When I move my neck back and forth, am I using my basal ganglia?

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Yeah.

[Robert Krulwich]

When I wink, am I using my basal ganglia? Yeah. When I make an expression in my face, am I using my basal ganglia?

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Definitely.

[Jad Abumrad]

What about if I'm reading the New Yorker?

[Liza Schoenfeld]

I don't think so.

[Robert Krulwich]

Apologies to the New Yorker and its employees.

[Jad Abumrad]

The point is, this part of your brain is really basic.

[Robert Krulwich]

And at the lab where she was working, they had figured out this particular.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Basal ganglia trick using this really cool technology called optogenetics.

[Robert Krulwich]

Maybe trick isn't quite the right word.

[Jad Abumrad]

What they'd done is they'd found a way to take a mouse, thread a little fiber optic cable through its skull, deep into its brain, into its Basal ganglia.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

So that when you shine a blue laser, Literally, we just shine lasers into mouse brains.

[Jad Abumrad]

They could actually turn its basal ganglia, or parts of it on or off.

[Robert Krulwich]

And this is in a live mouse?

[Liza Schoenfeld]

This is in a live mouse. So we have these really cool videos showing a mouse running around, having a great mouse time. You turn the light on, we can.

[Robert Krulwich]

Get him to freeze in mid stride.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Yeah.

[Robert Krulwich]

So you hit the laser, and boom, the mouse stops.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Mouse is like this.

[Jad Abumrad]

So you use light to, like, puppetize the mouse?

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Yes.

[Jad Abumrad]

If you're this mouse, no matter how hard you try, move feet, Move. As long as that light is on.

[Robert Krulwich]

Come on, move.

[Jad Abumrad]

You can't do it. Liza is holding the strings.

[Robert Krulwich]

Not exactly. It turns out she doesn't get to play with the laser that much.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

I'm kind of like, I'm the bottom of the totem pole. So I do a lot of pipetting.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's like where you squirt liquid from one tube to another.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

I'm working on my pipetting skills these days.

[Jad Abumrad]

Get the thumb muscles.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Oh, I could beat anyone in the thumb wrestling competition right now.

[Jad Abumrad]

So at a certain point, she was like, enough of this time for me to apply to grad school.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Yeah. I applied to five University of California, San Diego, University of Washington in Seattle, ucsf, Rockefeller University, and Harvard.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay, so you're going big.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Yeah, Go big or go home.

[Jad Abumrad]

Right, Exactly.

[Robert Krulwich]

So she heads off to her first interview.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

University of Washington went great. I loved it. I went to Penn, University of Pennsylvania, went down to UCSD in San Diego. It's a beautiful place, Great scientists. It's actually the largest neuroscience community in the world.

[Jad Abumrad]

So far, so good.

[Robert Krulwich]

Did you ever go back to San Francisco, where we are now?

[Jad Abumrad]

This is where things get strange.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Yes. So my last interview, my very last interview was at ucsf.

[Jad Abumrad]

And she says, about a week before.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

That interview, I got really sick. So I think it was some kind of stomach flu, but it was pretty severe nausea. I wasn't really able to eat or do anything.

[Jad Abumrad]

Throwing up?

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Yeah. Oh, all sorts of. I don't know. I had some bad dim sum the weekend before. That could have been it.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, that's it. So. So she goes to the doctor, he gives her some pills to fight the nausea.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

And then the next day was my interview. Friday was my interview. So I went. You know, there's a nice introduction. They give you breakfast.

[Jad Abumrad]

At this point, she's pretty familiar with the whole routine.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Generally, the way these interviews are structured is that we talk a little bit about my research in dopamine. And the basal ganglia.

[Jad Abumrad]

And these mice, they tell her about their work.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

I have to think of a couple witty questions. I ask my questions.

[Robert Krulwich]

What's a witty question in this context?

[Jad Abumrad]

A witty science question.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

It's a witty science.

[Robert Krulwich]

Witty science. Okay, never mind.

[Jad Abumrad]

Anyhow, she's raring to go, and she heads in to meet her first basal gangliatician of the day.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

And he studies. One of the things he studies is.

[Jad Abumrad]

Dopamine in the basal ganglia.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

He studies stuff that's a little bit more molecular than what I know, but we had a good conversation about dopamine. And at this point in the day, I was feeling okay, no nausea. Then I went to my second interview, which is this woman that I was so excited to talk to. Her name is Allison Dope, and she's pretty well known.

[Robert Krulwich]

Her name is Allison Dope.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Allison Dope.

[Robert Krulwich]

Wow. And she studies dopamine.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

She studies songbirds.

[Jad Abumrad]

Songbirds, which is what Liza really wanted to study.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

So birds have basal ganglias, too.

[Jad Abumrad]

So she's pretty fired up.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

And kind of the beginning of that interview, my face started to feel a little bit strange. And I was wearing glasses that day. So what I thought was happening was that my glasses were. You know, your glasses get loose, and they kind of start to slip down your nose, and you have to kind of tighten the muscles around your ears to try and keep your glasses on. So we were talking. I just kept on feeling like, God, why can't I stop tightening that? It was kind of got to the point where it started to distract me, but I felt okay. Then we went to lunch, and this was a lunch with all the current students and a lot of the current faculty and all the prospective students. And at lunch, I remember on the walk to lunch, my head just started spontaneously turning to the right. Like, I would be trying to sit here and face you, and I would just turn over here and face Robert.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's such a funny thing. Was your neck moving? And you're like, no, neck. Don't do that. Neck.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Yes, that's exactly what was happening. I was trying to send signals to my neck being like, all right, sitting here having lunch with an important professor. Why don't you just face him, talk to him? And instead, I'm just turning over here, turning over here, turning over here.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, you're turning a fairly wide arc.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Yeah.

[Robert Krulwich]

You are turning away from the professor.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

I remember at one point in lunch turning my chair like this so I.

[Robert Krulwich]

Could see you're trying to rotate a permanent sidelong glance.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

But she Figured it's not that painful, so it must just be a cramp or something.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

And I'm kind of thinking, oh, okay. So I slept funny last night. I must have slept on a weird angle on my pillow. Now I'm having a neck cramp. My glasses are loose. I just gotta tighten the glasses.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. Everything under control.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

So then I, after lunch, was going to go to. My third interview was with Alison, Dope's husband, who also studies songbirds, so he's familiar with the basal ganglia, too.

[Jad Abumrad]

They meet up to walk over to his office together.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

And so I explained to him on the walk over, I think I'm having neck cramps. Would it be possible maybe to try and get a hot pad?

[Robert Krulwich]

He says, sure, I may track one down.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

But on the walk, not only now does my neck start turning to the right, but it's snapping itself back involuntarily. Yeah, my head's snapping back like that.

[Jad Abumrad]

So suddenly your eyes are pointed up at the sky.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

And then as I'm talking to him, I'm realizing that I can't control my eyebrows from raising pretty tightly.

[Jad Abumrad]

Like you're doing right now.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Like I'm doing right now.

[Robert Krulwich]

So you're in a state of deep surprise to read your thoughts.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Yes, constant deep surprise. I can't stop it. I look surprised at everything I'm saying, and I can't stop it. So after the eyebrows start and I can't pull them back down, then the mouth, then all this area starts to go.

[Robert Krulwich]

The lower face.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Yes.

[Jad Abumrad]

What is it doing?

[Liza Schoenfeld]

It turns into this really twisted, painful, grimacing smile.

[Jad Abumrad]

Would you mind demonstrating? I'll demo it.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

I'll demo it. Okay. So I've got. The neck is like this crane back. The eyebrows are like this total surprise. My face is a little bit like.

[Jad Abumrad]

This crazy Frankenstein face.

[Robert Krulwich]

This is not obviously, the best demeanor for a graduate interview.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

No.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, it's not.

[Robert Krulwich]

Now, is Michael now noticing that something is?

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Yeah, I think at that point he thought I was just really excited to be talking about neuroscience. And I'm just trying to think, okay, mouth, like, try and just calm down a little bit. And it was pretty painful, too. I mean, it was like, imagine like a charley horse in your face. Yeah.

[Robert Krulwich]

But she gets through the interview.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

I actually do. Okay. You know, he asked me tough questions about science, and I can answer them, I think. And I leave the interview, and then I'm met by the woman who's the head of the admissions weekend.

[Jad Abumrad]

And she took one look at Liza.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

And she said, you know, I don't know if you should do the rest of her interviews. And with her is my student host.

[Jad Abumrad]

And Liza decides, all right, let me just call my dad.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Just to say, hey, dad, I'm in the middle of my interview, and something kind of funny is happening with my face. I can't control it. And while I'm talking to him, I lose control of my mouth and my tongue. So I can't. I can kind of talk, but it's. It's pretty bad.

[Jad Abumrad]

Pretty bad.

[Robert Krulwich]

Is your dad a doctor?

[Liza Schoenfeld]

No. Imagine your kid calling you, being like, I'm losing control of my face. And as they're telling you that, I started to think something's really wrong. And then my student host comes rushing back in, running. And he looks at me and he tries to put on a calm face, and he says, so now we need to go to the emergency room.

[Jad Abumrad]

So they throw into a taxi.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

And in the taxi, it went from I can't control my mouth to a complete.

[Jad Abumrad]

I mean, a complete mouth palsied and a torque complete.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

I did not look good. As we're pulling up to the emergency room is when my throat started tightening up.

[Jad Abumrad]

They rush her inside, and they have.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Me in a gurney in a room in the back of the ER surrounded by six people within two minutes, doctors swarming all around her oxygen mask, EKG leads all over my chest. They do an iv.

[Robert Krulwich]

And as she's lying there on the table, she's thinking, like, what's wrong with me? Why can't I control my throat? Why can't I control my body?

[Liza Schoenfeld]

And I just. I couldn't. I remember frantically sending messages like, you gotta cut this out now.

[Jad Abumrad]

But she wasn't in control. And it turned out that while she was going from interview to interview to interview, talking about how her lab had taken these little miceys and seized control.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Of their basal ganglia, The Compazine that.

[Robert Krulwich]

I took, that nausea drug, was actually.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Affecting dopamine systems in my basal ganglia.

[Jad Abumrad]

In other words, that drug had been doing to her pretty much what she'd been doing to those mice.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

1 to 2% of people who take Compazine, they can have what's called an acute dystonia, which is what happened to.

[Jad Abumrad]

Me during all those interviews.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

And the crazy thing is, the guy that I talked to first in the morning was the molecular dopamine guy. You know, how does dopamine get packed in the vesicles? How does it get released? And it wasn't until I started talking with the more systems level people who studied the behavioral output of the basal ganglia that I started to have behavioral deficits in my basal ganglia.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wow.

[Robert Krulwich]

So your basal ganglia are testing the San Francisco docs, and they are failing in ischiatouche. Did you get into San Francisco State?

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Ucsf?

[Robert Krulwich]

Are you csf? No.

[Jad Abumrad]

No. Damn it. Basal ganglia. We should probably tell everybody that Liza's obviously doing okay. Back in the er, when the doctors finally figured out what was going on, they just gave her some Benadryl, of all things.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

And actually, within 20 minutes, I was feeling a lot better.

[Jad Abumrad]

She could breathe, her face had unclenched. And when we asked her, how has this little adventure changed you? She said, well, I'm still working with those mice. Because when we talked to her, grad school hadn't started yet. And now when I go into that room with a little laser, I go.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

In now, and I just really. I empathize with them.

[Robert Krulwich]

Come on, little Casper. This will just be for a couple of minutes.

[Jad Abumrad]

You can do it.

[Liza Schoenfeld]

Yeah, I'm thinking a lot about that.

[Robert Krulwich]

Liza Schoenfeld is Now a proud PhD candidate at the University of Washington.

[Jad Abumrad]

And thank you to Brenna Farrell for production help on this podcast.

[Robert Krulwich]

And that is our podcast.

[Jad Abumrad]

There it is.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Krulowich.

[Jad Abumrad]

I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

Thank you for listening.

[Samantha]

Hi, this is Samantha from Sacramento, California. I'm a Radiolab listener. Radiolab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about [e-mail].

[Robert Krulwich]

Thanks.