This month’s featured researcher is Daniel Vahaba. Dan is a Mellon visiting assistant professor in public discourse in biology, biochemistry and neuroscience at Smith College. He is interested in how scientists communicate information and also how birds communicate. He received his PhD from UMass in 2018 in the lab of Luke Remage-Healey. They recently had a paper appear in the Nature Scientific Reports, “Neuroestrogen synthesis modifies neural representations of learned song without altering vocal imitation in developing songbirds“. This paper shows that hormones have many different effects on the neural circuits involved in learning bird song.

Here’s what else is new for ‘ ”University of Massachusetts” AND Amherst AND neuroscience’ in PubMed. These publications appeared on line in December. They are just a fraction of the research that occurs on campus. You can click on the PubMed ID to find the publication.

1: Bauernfeind AL, Babbitt CC. Metabolic changes in human brain evolution. Evol Anthropol. 2020 Jul;29(4):201-211. doi: 10.1002/evan.21831. Epub 2020 Apr 24. PMID: 32329960.

2: Rodberg E. Stress-Induced Increases in Locus Coeruleus Norepinephrine Underlie Extinction Learning Deficits. J Neurosci. 2020 Jul 15;40(29):5512-5514. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0677-20.2020. PMID: 32669401; PMCID: PMC7363475.

3: Vahaba DM, Hecsh A, Remage-Healey L. Neuroestrogen synthesis modifies neural representations of learned song without altering vocal imitation in developing songbirds. Sci Rep. 2020 Feb 27;10(1):3602. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-60329-3. PMID: 32108169; PMCID: PMC7046723.

4: Domínguez-Ordóñez R, García-Juárez M, Lima-Hernández FJ, Gómora-Arrati P, Domínguez-Salazar E, Luna-Hernández A, Hoffman KL, Blaustein JD, Etgen AM, González-Flores O. Protein kinase inhibitors infused intraventricularly or into the ventromedial hypothalamus block short latency facilitation of lordosis by oestradiol. J Neuroendocrinol. 2019 Dec;31(12):e12809. doi: 10.1111/jne.12809. Epub 2019 Nov 12. PMID: 31715031.