The connections between Andrea Pack’s academic interests at UVM—she majored in neuroscience and minored in math and dance—might seem obscure. But doing science is a creative process, Pack says, and she draws on all three disciplines in her graduate school research supported by a National Science Foundation grant. Working at Emory University’s Laney Graduate School in Atlanta, Pack ‘11 is exploring the process of improving the performance of sensory-guided motor behavior. Her long-term goal is to leverage the research to improve outcomes for patients recovering from brain trauma including strokes. The NSF funding supports her work at the Sober Lab at Emory, which studies the singing behavior of birds as a way of understanding the relationship between neural activity, muscular activation and performing tasks. In the case of the Bengalese finches in Pack’s lab, that task is singing. “We’re studying how the neurons and the muscles of the birds’ vocal areas organize themselves to learn and produce their songs. We look at the muscle coordination and degrees of freedom—how they become efficient singers,” Pack says.