Apr 23
Speed Art Museum Louisville, KY
TicketsMariajose (MJ) Metcalfe, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Anatomical Sciences and Neurobiology, University of Louisville's School of Medicine
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly— Speaking Without a Voice: Locked-in Syndrome and the Hope of Healing
Program Description
Widely considered one of the best films of the 21st century, THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY is a strikingly impressionistic portrait of someone trapped within their own interior after a massive stroke leaves them paralyzed from the neck down. In this presentation, Prof Mariajose Metcalfe, assistant professor in the Department of Anatomical Sciences and Neurobiology at UofL, will discuss her work on brain injury and her research in regenerating neural connection following injury. A constantly developing field of research, progress is ever-growing in returning movement and feeling to those deprived. Using a vast array of tools, Prof Metcalfe and her team are innovating the means by which the microscopic pathways of the body can be mended.
Film Synopsis
The true story of Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby who suffers a stroke and has to live with an almost totally paralyzed body; only his left eye isn't paralyzed.
Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), editor-in-chief of French fashion magazine Elle, has a devastating stroke at age 43. The damage to his brain stem results in locked-in syndrome, with which he is almost completely paralyzed and only able to communicate by blinking an eye. Bauby painstakingly dictates his memoir via the only means of expression left to him. Though trapped in his body, Bauby is still able to escape his "diving bell" by letting his imagination take flight like a butterfly. Artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel won the Best Director award at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival for this fiercely beautiful, quietly moving adaptation of Jean-Dominique Bauby's remarkable memoir.
About the Speaker
An assistant professor in the Department of Anatomical Sciences and Neurobiology at the University of Louisville's School of Medicine, Mariajose (MJ) Metcalfe, Ph.D. is a neuroscientist interested in how growth and plasticity can be unlocked in the adult nervous system—and how those same processes must be governed to achieve functional repair.
MJ earned her bachelor’s degree at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, where she first became fascinated by molecular signaling in the injured and diseased brain. She later moved to the U.S. to work as a Research Assistant in Paul Greengard’s laboratory at The Rockefeller University, gaining broad training in neurobiology and experimental rigor. She completed her PhD at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York under the mentorship of Dr. Maria Figueiredo-Pereira, studying how disruptions in protein homeostasis contribute to neurodegeneration.
During her postdoctoral training at the Burke Neurological Institute and later at the University of California, Irvine in Dr. Oswald Steward’s lab, MJ shifted her focus to spinal cord injury and recovery. There, she helped develop AAV-based strategies to promote neural growth and pioneered bioluminescence imaging approaches to track gene expression in real time—enabling precise control over when and where growth programs are activated.
In 2024, MJ joined the Department of Anatomical Sciences and Neurobiology at the University of Louisville School of Medicine as a tenure-track Assistant Professor. Her lab studies how temporally controlled gene-based interventions shape axonal growth, circuit remodeling, and long-term functional outcomes after neurotrauma. Her work is supported by the NIH (R01) and has been recognized by the Allen Institute through the Next Generation Leaders program.
Beyond the science, MJ is deeply committed to mentorship, collaboration, and building an inclusive training environment. She views the lab as both a discovery engine and a learning community, with the goal of preparing the next generation of neuroscientists to ask bold questions and translate fundamental insights into meaningful impact.