At age 15, Etienne Atangana completed a 30-day meditation challenge. It sounds like a small thing, but it stuck with him. “If you can change your mindset, you can change your life,” he said. “That got me interested in the brain.”
Atangana is graduating from the College of Arts and Sciences in May with a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience and minors in computer science and mathematics. In the fall, he will head to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City to pursue a Ph.D. in neuroscience.
Growing up in Chicago, Atangana wanted out of the cold, so he applied only to schools in warm climates. Miami offered a neuroscience major, still relatively rare at the undergraduate level, along with a generous scholarship. “The choice was simple after that,” Atangana said.
By his second semester, he had joined the lab of Roger McIntosh, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology, where he would spend the next three-and-a-half years. McIntosh’s lab, the Brain, Respiration, Embodiment, Affect, Translational Health (BREATH) Lab, examines the effects of aging, stress, and chronic inflammatory immune conditions on neuropsychological functioning. McIntosh gave Atangana room to run, letting him take on independent projects and explore methods outside the lab’s usual scope. That freedom came with its challenges. At one point, Atangana chose to apply a neuroimaging technique that nobody else in the psychology department was using. He had to figure it out on his own.
“I didn’t think I would be able to do it, but then I made one tiny baby step of progress and that was enough to keep me motivated. After months, I eventually figured it out,” Atangana said.
That work fed into a study on binge eating, in which he analyzed brain connectivity and heart rate variability to measure self-regulation in people who experience binge eating episodes. The findings showed that lower heart rate variability and certain brain connectivity patterns were both associated with binge eating.
Atangana’s senior thesis takes the question further: Does stress actually cause binge eating, and if so, what’s happening in the brain and body when it does? With McIntosh’s guidance, he’s been recruiting University students as participants, running them through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, and sending them surveys six times per day for two weeks while they wear a biometric watch. Getting the study off the ground took two years of preparation and planning.
“It was a really ambitious project,” he said. So far, the data confirms the stress-binge eating link. The more specific biological findings are still pending.
Atangana said a summer research program at the University in which he worked full-time in McIntosh’s lab was what sealed his decision to pursue a Ph.D. “I realized I actually do enjoy the slow, mundane process that is research,” he said. “I feel really lucky that I knew from the start, because I was able to tailor my experience specifically toward this goal.”
Emily Long, the assistant dean of student engagement and academic programs at the College of Arts and Sciences, has been so impressed with Atangana’s research experience and people skills that she’s regularly asked him to speak to prospective neuroscience students and their parents.
“These efforts go well beyond what is expected of a traditional student, demonstrating his kind nature and genuine care for others,” she said. “It has been a pleasure to get to know him as a person, but also to follow his research interests and feel his genuine desire to improve health care for people through research. Truly, Etienne exemplifies all the values and characteristics of a great Cane—he excels in the classroom, he has a desire for knowledge and personal growth, and he is willing to serve his community.”
Atangana’s advice to younger students is to find balance and get out of the library. “College is such an easy place to make friends and try new things,” he said, mentioning his good fortune at being assigned a freshman year roommate who became a close friend. “Get sleep, get some exercise in, eat decently healthy. If you do these things, you’re setting yourself up to live an awesome life.”
