This month’s featured researcher is Rebecca Spencer. Bekki is a professor in Psychological and Brain Sciences. She runs the Somneurolab, which studies many aspects of sleep and brain functions affected by sleep. As people age, sleep and memory. The lab has funding from the National Institute of Aging to study how sleep quality decreases and memory impairments increase in older adults. They also have funding from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to study the benefits of midday naps for preschool children. Her recent publication with post-doc Bethany Jones, which appeared in the journal Neurobiology of Learning and Memory shows that sleep helps consolidate aspects of emotional responses that are associated with memories.

Here’s what else is new for ‘ ”University of Massachusetts” AND Amherst AND neuroscience’ in PubMed. These publications appeared on line in October. They are just a fraction of the research that occurs on campus.

1: Jones BJ, Spencer RMC. Sleep Preserves Subjective and Sympathetic Emotional Response of Memories. Neurobiol Learn Mem. 2019 Oct 1:107096. doi:
10.1016/j.nlm.2019.107096. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 31585163.

2: Montagrin A, Martins-Klein B, Sander D, Mather M. Effects of hunger on emotional arousal responses and attention/memory biases. Emotion. 2019 Oct 7.
doi: 10.1037/emo0000680. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 31589063.

3: Swift KM, Gross BA, Frazer MA, Bauer DS, Clark KJD, Vazey EM, Aston-Jones G, Li Y, Pickering AE, Sara SJ, Poe GR. Abnormal Locus Coeruleus Sleep Activity Alters Sleep Signatures of Memory Consolidation and Impairs Place Cell Stability and Spatial Memory. Curr Biol. 2018 Nov 19;28(22):3599-3609.e4. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2018.09.054. Epub 2018 Nov 1. PubMed PMID: 30393040.