RESEARCH
Brain Aneurysm Leads to a Career
as Cognitive Neuroscientist
FRANK GARCEA, PhD
Frank Garcea was 17 years old and excited to soon begin his senior year of high school in
Rochester, New York, where he played on the soccer team. One hot July day, he and some fellow
teammates were playing soccer for fun when Frank experienced a pounding headache and pain
radiating up the back of his neck. Within minutes, the pain intensified. Noting Frank’s distress,
concerned parents called 911. “It came out of the blue,” says Frank, now 30. “I knew something
wasn’t right.”
Frank was rushed to the University of Rochester-affiliated Strong Memorial Hospital where he
was diagnosed with a ruptured brain aneurysm. The next morning, Frank underwent surgical
treatment performed by neurosurgeon G. Edward Vates, MD, PhD, professor of neurosurgery,
endocrinology, and otolaryngology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. Eleven
days after being admitted to the hospital, Frank went home and shortly thereafter started his
senior year.
Remarkably, Frank suffered no physical or cognitive deficits. But at a follow-up appointment, Dr.
Vates gave Frank some bad news: no more contact sports; it was just too risky. “Soccer was part
of my identity so I was devastated,” says Frank.
A positive tipping point
Despite his distress at the time, Frank now looks back on his ruptured brain aneurysm and
meeting Dr. Vates not in negative terms but rather as a positive tipping point in his life.
Before his ruptured aneurysm, Frank was considering colleges with good soccer programs.
But with that option off the table, Frank applied and was accepted to a college (St. John Fisher
College) not far from his hometown of Rochester. In his freshman year, Frank’s interest in biology
and curiosity about the brain began to blossom. “I wanted to understand why I was OK and
others aren’t. I started to think about a career in medicine or biomedical research,” he says.
Early in his sophomore year, Frank contacted Dr. Vates and expressed interest in working in
a lab that was conducting brain aneurysm research. Frank was becoming particularly interested
in cognition and how the brain works. Frank’s interest came as no surprise to Dr. Vates. “I knew
Frank was special because the first thing he wanted to see was video from his surgery,”
he recalls.
Before long, Frank was working part-time in Dr. Vates’s lab while attending school, learning
hands-on research techniques and pouring over scientific journal articles. During his junior year,
Frank had his own project studying memory in mouse models of stroke. “Dr. Vates has been a
wonderful mentor,” says Frank.
By his senior year, Frank began working with Brad Mahon, PhD, in the Department of Brain and
Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester. Dr. Mahon studies the cognitive and neural
processes that make the simple things we do on a daily basis possible, like drinking a glass of
water. Following Frank’s college graduation in 2010, he joined Dr. Mahon’s lab as a full-time
research assistant.
B R AIN ANEU RYSM FOU NDATION | SU M M E R 201 8 | BAFOU ND.ORG
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