Category Archives: Research

UMass SfN 2022 Presentations

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UMass neuroscientists are presenting their research at the Society for Neuroscience Conference in San Diego. Here is a list of titles and authors for those presentations. Click on the number to read the abstract.

028.15. Synaptic protein levels and physiological activity in primary cortical neurons are influenced by time of day.
J. WANG, B. L. ROBERTS, I. N. KARATSOREOS;

031.02. Neuronal cell type mapping in the ring and rhinophore ganglia of a gastropod mollusc using single cell transcriptomics
M. D. RAMIREZ, T. N. BUI, P. S. KATZ

094.07. LC-NE regulation of goal directed behaviours
E. M. Vazey
Mini symposium talk

185.15. Quantitative assessments of neurodevelopmental disorders using deep learning and systems neuroscience techniques
K. DOCTOR, D. WU, A. PHADIS, J. NURNBERGER, Jr, M. PLAWECKI, J. V. JOSE

209.01. Structure and organization of the olfactory system in the mollusc Berghia stephanieae
C. C. TAIT, M. D. RAMIREZ, P. S. KATZ

209.02. A connectomics approach to an enigmatic ganglion in a gastropod mollusc
H. H. SANT, B. D. DRESCHER, Y. MEIROVITCH, R. SCHALEK, Y. WU, J. LICHTMAN, P. S. KATZ

224.02. Sex differences in adrenergic ?1 regulation of reinforcement behavior
E. M. RODBERG, S. Y. YU, E. M. VAZEY

291.10. Sensory Neuron Dysfunction in Orthotopic Mouse Models of Colon Cancer
C. GAFFNEY, M. BALOGH, J. ZHANG, N. KALAKUNTLA, N. T. NGUYEN, R. T. TRINH, C. AGUILAR, H. V. PHAM, B. MILUTINOVIC, J. M. NICHOLS, R. MAHALINGAM, A. J. SHEPHERD; MD Anderson

309.11. Circadian desynchronization-induced metabolic disorder is ameliorated by endocannabinoid receptor knockout, without change in feeding or activity
B. FALCY, G. L. PEARSON, T. L. LEISE, I. N. KARATSOREOS

386.06. The Chilean brush tailed mouse (Octodon degus): a diurnal precocial rodent as a new model to study visual receptive field properties of superior colliculus neurons.
N. I. MÁRQUEZ, P. FERNÁNDEZ?ABURTO, A. R. DEICHLER, I. PERALES, J.-C. LETELIER, G. J. MARÍN, J. MPODOZIS, S. L. PALLAS

445.08. Accelerated aging process with neurodegeneration in the cerebral cortex of cognitively impaired aged marmosets (Callithrix jacchus)
C. FREIRE-COBO, E. ROTHWELL, M. VARGHESE, W. G. M. JANSSEN, A. LACREUSE, P. R. HOF

468.17. The Contribution of 5-HT1A/2AReceptors and GABAergic Neurons of the Pedunculopontine Tegmental Area to Sensorimotor Gating
E. CORRELL, G. CASTELLANO, K. FENELON

468.18. Spatiotemporal identification of amygdala neurons active during sensorimotor gating
W. HUANG, K. FÉNELON

478.02. Selective recruitment of offspring-responsive medial preoptic area networks modulates caregiving behavior attuned to the needs of offspring
K. COPELAS, N. CELESTIN, M. PEREIRA

478.05. Chemogenetic activation of the medial preoptic area ameliorates deficits in maternal motivation in the wistar-kyoto rat model of depression
A. A. ANDERSON, M. P. HESTER, M. PEREIRA

478.11. Neuroestrogen regulation of inhibitory synaptic transmission in genetically-identified auditory neurons
H. KANG, Y. YAZAKI-SUGIYAMA, Y. MOROHASHI, L. REMAGE-HEALEY

487.08. EEG bifurcation dynamics in the absence of report in a visual masking paradigm
C. DEMBSKI, K. ORTEGO, C. STEINHILBER, M. COHEN, M. PITTS

543.09. Characterizing a Circuit Linking Auditory Pallium and the Social Behavior Network
J. A. SPOOL, A. LALLY, P. CHEN, L. REMAGE-HEALEY

645.16. Topographic, network-level organization of response profiles in the songbird auditory forebrain.
F. A. CINI, L. REMAGE-HEALEY

647.07. Neuroimmune activation of the olfactory bulb is regulated by time of day
G. PEARSON, B. FALCY, J. WANG, S. AKLI, I. KARATSOREOS

657.01. Where do I remember this? Recognition memory for low-level visual stimuli.
N. DE LA ROSA-RIVERA, D. E. HUBER, R. A. COWELL

662.14. Explicit exploration during virtual throwing and skill transfer to a real-world task in healthy children and young adults
M. CHENG, M. E. HUBER, M. SADEGHI, L. CHUKOSKIE, D. STERNAD, D. LEVAC

752.07. Material Engineering Toolset for Neurological Interfaces
S. RAO

New neuroscience journal club focused on movement and neurodegenerative disorders

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When: Friday, March 18, 2022 (ongoing one Friday per month)
2-3pm
Where: Zoom
Contact: Douglas Martini (dmartini@umass.edu)

The UMass Intercampus Movement and Neurodegenerative Disorders Interest Group is an intercampus collaboration aimed at creating a forum for research talk on movement and neurodegenerative disorders. Current attendees include folks from UMass Med, Lowell, and Amherst. We encourage participation (including presenting your work) from a wide range of disciplines, support students/trainees (presentation practice) and advance collaborations. We currently meet (Zoom) once a month on Fridays from 2-3pm. The next scheduled meeting is for March 18th. If you are interested in participating in the Interest Group or have follow-up questions, please contact Douglas Martini (dmartini@umass.edu).

Inspiration Awards for Neuroscience and Technology

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The Initiative on Neurosciences is pleased to announce Inspiration Awards for Neuroscience & Technology to support UMass graduate students and postdoctoral researchers proposing research at the interface of neuroscience and either engineering or computer sciences.

Funding amount: Up to $10,000 for single trainee awards and up to $15,000 for collaborative awards involving two or more trainees.
Funding is available for up to 8 awards.

The proposal must be for research that incorporates new methodologies or employs existing methodologies in new ways to address problems in neuroscience or problems inspired by neuroscience. This includes, but is not limited to, novel ways of collecting, analyzing, or modeling data.

Deadline for application, March 25, 2022

Proposals will be judged on the following criteria:
1) Creativity
2) Feasibility
3) Integration of neuroscience with engineering or computer sciences.

Considerations will be made to allocate awards broadly to across neuroscience, engineering, and computer science as well as demographically to broaden participation of women and under-represented groups. Demographic information will be collected separately and not available to the review panel.

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Student Spotlight – Kyle Kainec

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Kyle Kainec with his family

Kyle Kainec is a 5th year NSB student in the Somneuro Lab led by Dr. Rebecca Spencer. His research interests broadly include using advanced neuroimaging tools and analysis techniques to investigate the intersection of sleep and memory consolidation. In 2021, Kyle co-authored 4 publications, received a Graduate School Dissertation Research Grant, and nearly submitted the first manuscript of his dissertation work investigating sleep-dependent associated memory consolidation in young adults. Kyle’s first, first author publication, titled “Age-related changes in sleep-dependent novel word consolidation”, was recently published in Acta Psychologica and contributes growing evidence that encoding strength is crucially important to understand the expression of sleep-dependent benefits in older adults. In the coming year, he looks forward to completing his dissertation work, expanding his industry involvement, and preparing for what is next. On behalf of the NSB community, congratulations to Kyle!

Publication: Kainec, K. A., Paracha, A. W., Ali, S., Bussa, R., Mantua, J., & Spencer, R. (2022). Age-related changes in sleep-dependent novel word consolidation. Acta psychologica, 222, 103478.

UMass Amherst is home to new collaborative Center on AI, Aging, and Alzheimer’s

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Deepak Ganesan

UMass Amherst and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have just announced a new collaborative Center with a goal to improve in-home care for aging adults and patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The Massachusetts AI and Technology Center for Connected Care in Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease (MassAITC) aims to apply groundbreaking research and innovation to real world problems associated with in-home patient care. The center is meant to be a research accelorator– to bring projects that are still in the lab and transition them to the field. The $20 million grant over 5 years awarded to MassAITC, is funded by the National Institute on Aging which is a part of the National Institute of Health.

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Karine Fenelon and David Moorman awarded collaborative research seed grant

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The UMass Amherst ADVANCE program, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), began in 2018 to cultivate collaboration in science and engineering that furthers equity among faculty regardless of race, gender, or sexuality. One of three recent collaborative research seed grants was awarded to Dr. Karine Fenelon in Biology, and Dr. David Moorman in Psychological and Brain Sciences. The research project titled, Investigating Amygdala Circuit Dysfunctions in a Mouse Model Relevant to Schizophrenia aims to identify amygdala mechanisms that cause pre-pulse inhibition (PPI) deficits as promising drug targets, using a mouse model of schizophrenia. To do so, the team will perform in vitro (Fenelon group) and in vivo (Moorman group) electrophysiological recordings of neurons central to PPI. You can read more about Karine and David’s project, here. Congratulations to Karine and David!

ChangHui Pak and Gerry Downes awarded the Armstrong Fund for Science

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The Armstrong Fund for Science was established in 2006 by benefactors John and Elizabeth Armstrong to help research projects gain more ground before they are eligible for traditional grants. The 2021 award was given to Biology’s Gerald Downes, and MCB’s ChangHui Pak for their collaborative research into the disruption of brain development by the mutation of a gene, TBCK. Mutations of the gene cause a rare condition called TBCK Syndrome. Professors Pak and Downes will receive funding of $40,000 for 2 years for the preliminary research needed to prepare for a larger research project.

ChangHui and Gerry hope to learn more about how the mutations in the TBCK gene cause the debilitating syndrome which leads to a high rate of mortality in children and adolescents with progressive loss of muscle tone, intellectual disability, and drug-resistant epilepsy among some of the symptoms. The collaboration will involve the zebrafish that the Downes Lab has already engineered with TBCK syndrome. Pak will be using pluripotent stem cells that will be engineered with the mutations specific to TBCK syndrome, grow them into neurons and compare the mutated cells with healthy cells. They are both excited to work together learning from each model.

The entire neuroscience community extends an enthusiastic congratulations and will look forward to seeing the progress!

UMass Neurosciences Publications – February 2021

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Deepak Ganesan

This month’s featured researcher is Deepak Ganesan. He is a Professor in the College of Information and Computer Sciences. This month, he was the senior author on a paper in the Journal of Medical Internet Research entitled, “Effect of Sleep and Biobehavioral Patterns on Multidimensional Cognitive Performance: Longitudinal, In-the-Wild Study“. Deepak’s group is building wearable sensors for monitoring health. His work involves low-power sensing and communication, networked systems, and machine learning. His recent work includes the design of ultra-low passive radios for wearables, novel wearable technologies such as low-power eye trackers to monitor health signals, and robust detection of important health targets such as drug use, smoking, and over-eating

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

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UMass Neuroscience Publications – December 2019

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This month’s Featured Researcher is Ilia Karatsoreos, who just joined the faculty of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Ilia’s research addresses how the body’s internal circadian clock and “stress response” systems help maintain mental and physical health.  His latest paper, which just appeared in the December issue of Frontiers in Neuroendrinology, reviews the research explaining how the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis interacts with downstream pathways to mediate resilience to environmental stresses.  Ilia is joining UMass from Washington State University. We are pleased to have him aboard. His lab is located in the newly renovated Neuroscience Wing on the 2nd floor of Morrill Science Center 4N.

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 Neurosciences Publications – August 2019

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This month’s featured researcher is Dr. Rebecca Ready. Dr. Ready is a professor and Director of Clinical Training in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. She works on the assessment of emotion regulation in healthy aging adults and in clinical populations, including Mild Cognitive Impairment, Alzheimer’s disease, and Huntington’s disease. She studies emotion reactions in the lab and in daily life and is interested in how individual differences, such as executive functions, memory, and personality affect emotion regulation outcomes.  She is a member of the Center for Research on Families and the Center for Personalized Health Medicine. She has had 5 papers appear recently in PubMed (see below).

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. Continue reading →

UMass Neurosciences Publications – July 2019

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This month’s featured researcher is the UMass Director of Neurosciences, Paul Katz. His lab studies the neural basis of behavior. Three of his recent papers appeared in PubMed this month.  His recent commentary in Current Biology explores how often Life Scientists display a bias in their choice of experiments and their understanding of evolution. His work shows that different levels of biological organization undergo separate evolutionary history. In particular, his recent Journal of Neuroscience paper showed that the same neuron in different species have dramatically different functions in neural circuits that produce the same behavior. Another paper, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Academy, which appeared in PubMed this month showed convergent evolution of neural circuits and behaviors.  Katz is leading a collaborative team of researchers from four universities that form the Berghia BRAIN project to use high throughput methods to study the neural basis of behavior in a sea slug.

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. Continue reading →

UMass Neurosciences Publications – May 2019

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This month’s featured researcher is Margaret Stratton.  Meg is an assistant professor in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UMass. Her research focuses on  understanding the molecular components of memory. In particular, she works on a protein called calcium-calmodulin dependent protein kinase II or CaMKII. molecule is actually a complex of twelve subunits that provide it with unique properties that allow it to alter neuronal activity. In recent paper published in the journal Neuron, Meg and her collaborators demonstrated a novel mechanism that allows CamKII to have persistent effects.

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