This month’s featured research is Dr. Meghan Huber. Meghan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering in the College of Engineering. She also has adjunct appointments in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences. Meghan runs the Human Robot Systems Laboratory, which focuses on understanding how humans and robots can learn from the physical interactions of one another. She has a recent paper in the Journal of Neurophysiology, which examines energy expenditures during human walking by simulating responses on a split treadmill. She applies some of this knowledge to wearable exoskeletons as described in a recent BioRxiv preprint.

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

1: Rodheim K, Kainec K, Noh E, Jones B, Spencer RMC. Emotional memory consolidation during sleep is associated with slow oscillation-spindle coupling strength in young and older adults. Learn Mem. 2023 Sep 28;30(9):237-244. doi: 10.1101/lm.053685.122. PMID: 37770106; PMCID: PMC10547370.

2: Neal SJ, Rajasekaran A, Jusi? N, Taylor L, Read M, Alfandari D, Pignoni F, Moody SA. Using Xenopus to discover new candidate genes involved in BOR and other congenital hearing loss syndromes. J Exp Zool B Mol Dev Evol. 2023 Oct 13. doi: 10.1002/jez.b.23222. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 37830236.

3: Kapoulea EA, Ready RE, Ginn JC. Loneliness and risk for cardiovascular disease in the United States and Japan: The effects of nationality, collectivism, and gender. Soc Sci Med. 2023 Oct 9;337:116299. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.116299. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 37837950.

4: Price M, Huber ME, Hoogkamer W. Minimum effort simulations of split-belt treadmill walking exploit asymmetry to reduce metabolic energy expenditure. J Neurophysiol. 2023 Apr 1;129(4):900-913. doi: 10.1152/jn.00343.2022. Epub 2023 Mar 8. PMID: 36883759; PMCID: PMC10110733

5: Abdikadirova B, Price M, Jaramillo JM, Hoogkamer W, Huber ME. Gait adaptation to asymmetric hip stiffness applied by a robotic exoskeleton. bioRxiv [Preprint]. 2023 Oct 10:2023.10.10.561679. doi: 10.1101/2023.10.10.561679. PMID: 37873204; PMCID: PMC10592753.

6: Albertin CB, Katz PS. Evolution of cephalopod nervous systems. Curr Biol. 2023 Oct 23;33(20):R1087-R1091. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.08.092. PMID: 37875089.

7: Munro CE, Boyle R, Chen X, Coughlan G, Gonzalez C, Jutten RJ, Martinez J, Orlovsky I, Robinson T, Weizenbaum E, Pluim CF, Quiroz-Gaviria YT, Gatchel JR, Vannini P, Amariglio R. Recent contributions to the field of subjective cognitive decline in aging: A literature review. Alzheimers Dement (Amst). 2023 Oct 18;15(4):e12475. doi: 10.1002/dad2.12475. PMID: 37869044; PMCID: PMC10585124.