Isabell Sagar '23 - Women's Cross Country and Track & Field
Returning to GoCrimson.com for an eighth season, "Around The Yard: Life As A Harvard Student-Athlete" explores life away from the playing fields for select Harvard student-athletes through Q&A style entries.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I consider myself from San Antonio, Texas, but I moved around a lot throughout middle school and high school; I've also lived in Illinois, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. I am an MBB neuroscience concentrator, and I'm in Adams house! I'm also a long distance runner on the cross country and track and field teams-my events on the track are the 5k and the 10k.
When did you start working in the Lazar lab and how did you find out about/get the opportunity?
I started working in the Lazar lab this semester, but I've been interested in Dr. Lazar's work since taking her seminar--Cognitive Neuroscience of Meditation--as a first-year in 2019. I was struck by the research studies we discussed in class, which featured rich empirical data that overwhelmingly supported the efficacy of mindfulness-based therapies for a wide range of patient populations. Over quarantine, I became compelled to further pursue research of meditation, as I started to develop my own practice and experience its benefits personally. I believe that mindfulness practice is incredibly applicable in real-life situations, such that it may allow a person to approach their experience with a higher degree of acceptance, one which often precedes a greater sense of well-being.
What kind of work are you doing in the lab?
Within the Lazar lab, I am currently working on writing up some exciting results for data sets associated with a large set of experiments conducted over the course of a few years. These experiments were part of a study which was conducted to understand whether the mechanism by which meditation reduces stress is unique from that of other, standard stress-reduction interventions which do not incorporate mindfulness (in short-the answer is yes!). The findings relate correlations in changes in perceived stress levels, changes in gray matter volume in both the hippocampus and amygdala, and changes in physiological measures of stress (allostatic load markers), like cortisol and insulin levels.
How could your research in the lab be applied in real-life situations?
Of course, there are many ancillary benefits to this larger principle, including stress and anxiety relief, self control, affect tolerance, equanimity, and mood-improvement, to name a few. There are also several niche populations for which tailored mindfulness could be a helpful for, including patients struggling with a wide range of mental illnesses (depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, etc), as well as physical and/or physiological conditions (chronic pain, hypertension, sleep pathologies, etc).
Is this field something you'd like to pursue in your career path? Do you have post-grad plans?
As a result of my growing personal interest in cognitive neuroscience, I could definitely see myself staying in this field long-term. I hope to eventually complete an MD/PhD program after completing my undergraduate education. I am considering taking 1-2 years to stay in India to study meditation practice in a different setting, as well as to develop my Hindi skills, prior to enrolling in a post-grad program like this.
