Director’s Channel – January 2021

IONs Director, Paul Katz

You might have noticed that I have not written a Director’s Channel since September. Part of the reason is that I found it difficult to compose an optimistic message in the face of all the awful tragedies that were piling up daily. However, the new year and recent events including the development of vaccines against COVID-19 have given me new hope for the future. I can now foresee a time when the danger of the virus will be minimal, when the nation is guided again by science, not blind allegiance to a deranged sociopath, when we can return to meeting in person rather than over Zoom.
That said, we are really fortunate to live in an age when it is possible to communicate face-to-face with people all over the world. We will be continuing with on-line seminars, at least until the end of spring semester. We have a great line up of speakers for the Neuroscience Distinguished Lecture series.
I wish you, your families, and all of the special people in your life, a happy, healthy, and productive new year.

UMass Neuroscience Publications – December 2020

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.

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UMass Neuroscience Publications – November 2020

Hava Siegelmann

This month’s featured researcher is Hava Siegelmann, who is a Professor in the College of Information and Computer Science. Hava runs the Biologically Inspired Neural & Dynamical Systems (BINDS) Laboratory. She recently returned to UMass after leading an artificial intelligence initiative for the Department of Defense. This month an article that she co-authored, entitled, “A modeling framework for adaptive lifelong learning with transfer and savings through gating in the prefrontal cortex“, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in which neural network modeling was used to create a process that might mimic how the prefrontal cortex uses and expands its own memory. Hava herself was recently featured in a UMass article, A Campus Visionary.

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

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UMass Neuroscience Publications – October 2020

This month’s Featured Researcher is Agnès Lacreuse. Dr. Lacreuse is a Professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences. Her lab studies age-related cognitive decline in a nonhuman primate with a short lifespan, the common marmoset. This month in collaboration with researchers at the University of Massachusetts Worcester and Worcester PolyTech, they published a paper in Science Reports that found sex differences in brain connectivity as marmosets age.

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. You can click on the PubMed ID to find the publication.

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UMass Neuroscience Publications – September 2020

Buju Dasgupta

This month’s featured researcher is Nilanjana “Buju” Dasgupta, who is a professor in Psychological & Brain Sciences, the Director of Faculty Equity and Inclusion in the College of Natural Sciences, and Director of the Institute of Diversity Sciences. Her research focuses on implicit bias. This month, she appeared in Pubmed as an author on a paper entitled, “Open science, communal culture, and women’s participation in the movement to improve science

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

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Director’s Channel September 2020

IONs Director, Paul Katz

As the tragedy of COVID-19 continues to spread, we are learning to adapt to our new online lifestyle. In the spring, our seminar speakers all canceled because they were hoping to be able to visit in person the following year; the idea of giving a virtual talk was not appealing. Now, all of those speakers have agreed to give remote seminars. As a result, we have an incredible lineup for the 2020-2021 Distinguished Neuroscience Lectures. These lectures are presented as part of the Neuroscience and Behavior Graduate Program Seminar Series.

I am especially thrilled that next month, Erich Jarvis will be giving three talks in collaboration with the College of Natural Sciences Distinguished Scientist and Engineer Lecture Series and also in collaboration with the Fine Arts Center at UMass. Erich has a very interesting history as a dancer and as a Black scientist, which he will be sharing along with his incredible research on vocal learning.

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UMass Neuroscience Publications – August 2020

This month’s featured researcher is Melinda Novak. Melinda is a professor in Psychological and Brain Sciences. She is one of the founders of the Neuroscience and Behavior Graduate Program. Her research has centered around neuroendocrinology and stress. She and her long-term collaborator and colleague, Jerry Meyer wrote a review paper, which was published this month in Developmental Pyschobiology and summarizes work on non-invasive measurements of stress in newborns.

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

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Director’s Channel August 2020

Paul Katz, IONs Director

Science has an essential role is to play in modern society. Science is the engine that allows the economy to grow; it creates the innovation for new devices and new knowledge for that improves lives. Currently, we are depending upon science to develop a vaccine to rescue us from the COVID-19 pandemic. But developing the vaccine is only one step towards ending the ongoing tragedy; recent polls found that as few as 50% of Americans are willing to be vaccinated. Science is not enough, people need to be able to understand the knowledge that is gained through science and trust its application.

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Student Spotlight

Ellen Rodberg

This month’s student spotlight is on Ellen Rodberg. Ellen is a 2nd year NSB graduate student in Elena Vazey’s lab in the Biology Department, where she works on the role of the Locus Coeruleus in stress responses. This past month, she published a single-author “Journal Club” review in the Journal of Neuroscience, titled, “Stress-Induced Increases in Locus Coeruleus Norepinephrine Underlie Extinction Learning Deficits”. Ellen transferred to UMass from the University of Michigan and was previously an undergraduate at UMass.

UMass Neuroscience Publications – July 2020

Dr. Rebecca Ready

This month’s featured researcher is Rebecca Ready. Rebecca is a Professor and Director of Clinical Training in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. She is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and of the American Psychological Association and heads the Aging, Emotion, and Cognition Lab here at UMass. This month she had a paper appear in PubMed in which a team validated testing measure to determine outcomes of patients with Huntington’s Disease.

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

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Director’s Channel, July 2020

Humans, as a species, have a remarkable capacity to adapt rapidly to environmental challenges by cooperating in groups. Our group identities are based on shared norms and beliefs that get reinforced by the group. However, these beliefs are not necessarily egalitarian, fair, or even humane. Our country is currently facing several challenges simultaneously: COVID-19, economic collapse, systemic racism and police brutality. These crises are being exacerbated by clashes of beliefs fostered by different groups: partisanship, anti-science beliefs, xenophobia, nationalism, and racism. We need to combat these beliefs if we are going to adapt and thrive as a society.

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Anti-racism in the NSB Community

The Neuroscience and Behavior (NSB) Graduate Program, in conjunction with the other Interdepartmental Graduate Programs (IDGP) and departments in the College of Natural Sciences, has initiated efforts to combat anti-Black racism and increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in our community. A group of IDGP students, led by NSB student president Wayne Barnaby and colleagues, launched a petition to the Chancellor and Provost to demand structural changes to support the UMass Black and Brown Community. Neuroscience community members are urged to read and sign the petition, and share it widely throughout our networks.

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UMass Neuroscience Publications – June 2020

This month’s featured researcher is Joseph Bergan. Joe is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences. His lab examines neural circuits underlying social behaviors in rodents. His latest publication to appear in PubMed was published in the journal eNeuro and looks at sex-specific synaptic connections in the medial amygdala. They found anatomical differences in aromatase-expressing circuits that underlie sex-differences in response to social stimuli.

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

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Director’s Channel, May/June 2020

IONs Director, Paul Katz

In these troubled times, community is very precious. It takes effort to maintain a community when you don’t just bump into people in the hallways or at seminars. We have lost opportunities such as the annual awards dinner to meet and celebrate our students’ accomplishments. Please read about the winners of the Golden Neuron Award and the Vincent Dethier Prize. I am particularly impressed by work of Melise Edwards and Kate Otter, who shared the Early Career Award.  Melise is leading MUSEmentorship.com (Mentorship for Under-represented STEM Enthusiasts), which aims to provide representation and mentorship to groups in STEM. She is only a first-year PhD student, but she is an active leader in peer mentorship. Kate Otter has been running a Social Justice Discussion group, which relates social justice to science. I attended the most recent group (via Zoom, of course) and it inspired me to think more deeply about how our perception of the world is determined by our identity and our community. There is a concept in ethology called the Umwelt, which is just German for environment. It refers to how an animal experiences the world. We may think that our own experience of the world is universal and that if anything, animals experience an impoverished version of the world that we see, hear, and smell around us. But, this is far from the truth. Continue reading