Zach Mastrodicasa
While there are certainly several instances I could point to as being influential moments in my life, my experience as a student in Dr. P’s Behavioural Neuroscience program at LU had the most profound impact on my life. My journey began the day I read LU’s Neuroscience program description online, where Dr. P stated that “the program was developed because there is a subset of students with integrative capacity who are not ‘A’ students but who are extraordinary problem solvers who love to learn.” Dr. P’s interdisciplinary approach to academics was refreshing and his philosophy of integrating the sciences “across the seven levels of discourse” was a breath of fresh air.
Thanks to Dr. P, I realized during my time at LU that an interdisciplinary field that combines Neuroscience with Law is what interests me most. Dr. P would often lament how our current legal structure is “not based in science, it’s based on (social) consensus”. Being a true man of science who strongly believed the scientific method to be our best tool for unlocking knowledge, Dr. P imagined that Neuroscience would inevitably change litigation at a fundamental level by providing a deeper insight into thought processes. Having graduated from Dr. P’s Neuro program at Laurentian, I now have my sights set towards the future where I seek a career in NeuroLaw, the newly emerging field that explores the effects that discoveries in neuroscience will have upon our legal rules and standards. I hope to commemorate Dr. P by carrying on his philosophical legacy in these pursuits.
Dr. P,
I am grateful to have had you as a mentor and I will forever cherish the memories I have of our time together. You will always be missed but never forgotten.….and even though I’m not in the Koren Helmet, I will forever sense your presence watching over me.
~Big Z
Thursday August 23, 2018 at 2:36 pm