Nicholas Nelson is a UCSD Biological Sciences Ph.D. Candidate in Axel Nimmerjahn’s lab at the Salk Institute. Nicholas’s interests lie in the interface of the nervous and immune systems, and his thesis research investigates how glial cells in the spinal cord regulate nervous system homeostasis and inflammation during the development of chronic pain. More broadly, Nicholas is interested in what fueled the evolution of the human mind – what cellular and molecular actions underlie cognition in mammals, and what unique factors permitted the emergence of the mind’s incredible diversity, beauty, and pitfalls that so define human experience.