UMass Neurosciences Publications – September 2022

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Sara Holec, PhD

This month’s featured researcher is Sara A.M. Holec. Dr. Holec is a postdoctoral associate in Dr. Amanda Woerman’s lab in the Department of Biology and Institute of Applied Life Sciences. Sara earned her PhD in 2019 at Creighton University and joined Dr. Woerman’s lab in 2020. She is interested in studying ?-synuclein prion strains and understanding how these differences contribute to human disease. Dr. Holec is the first author on a paper that appeared in Acta Neuropathologica this month that was a collaboration with Nobel Laureate Stanley Prusiner, titled “Multiple system atrophy prions transmit neurological disease to mice expressing wild-type human ?-synuclein.” They show that six different MSA patient samples transmit neurological disease and induce ?-synuclein prion formation in mice expressing wild-type human ?-synuclein. This paper helps validate the use of mice for the study of human prion diseases.

1: Holec SAM, Lee J, Oehler A, Ooi FK, Mordes DA, Olson SH, Prusiner SB, Woerman AL. Multiple system atrophy prions transmit neurological disease to mice expressing wild-type human ?-synuclein. Acta Neuropathol. 2022 Oct;144(4):677-690. doi: 10.1007/s00401-022-02476-7. Epub 2022 Aug 26. PMID: 36018376.

Here’s what else is new for ‘ ”University of Massachusetts” AND Amherst AND neuroscience’ in PubMed. These publications appeared online in September. 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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Director’s Channel – Sept 2022

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Paul Katz
IONs Director, Paul Katz

The semester is now in full swim and we have exciting plans for the coming academic year. Based on a series of faculty forums held last year, we identified neuroscience and women’s health and well-being as a major strength at UMass. We will use this theme as the focus of the Interdisciplinary Neurosciences Conference to be held in the spring of 2023.

This summer, I attended my first off campus in-person conference since the start of the pandemic. It was so much more rewarding to be in an audience of real people instead of staring at a screen. I got to meet people and make new contacts. One of those contacts, will be our next IONs Distinguished Lecture, Dr. Venessa Ruta from the Rockefeller University. She examines the neural basis of complex behaviors of the fruit fly. On November 9th, we will hold a Neuroscience poster preview session in conjunction with her talk. This will be your opportunity to practice presenting your poster for the Society for Neuroscience Conference or to see the amazing work that will presented at this conference without having to travel to San Diego.

This semester there is a great lineup of talks in the Neuroscience and Behavior Graduate program seminar series including NSB student talks. So, get out and go see a research talk in person.

UMass Neurosciences Publications – Summer 2022

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Katherine Dixon-Gordon

This month’s featured researcher is Katherine Dixon-Gordon. Dr. Dixon-Gordon is an associate professor in the Clincal Program in the Department Psychological & Brain Sciences. She directs the Clinical Affective Science lab, whose mission is to harness innovative research methods to advance our understanding of emotional suffering and intentional self-injury and improve evidence-based, compassionate, and accessible treatments. She received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Simon Fraser University and she completed her residency and did clinical work at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Dr. Dixon-Gordon is a board certified Dielectic Behavioral Therapy Trainer at Behavioral Tech LLC. She directs the DBT Program in the Psychological Services Center at UMass. She co-authored a paper in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, titled, “The Effectiveness of 6 versus 12 Months of Dialectical Behavior Therapy for Borderline Personality Disorder: A Noninferiority Randomized Clinical Trial“, which recently appeared in PubMed.

Here’s what else is new for ‘ ”University of Massachusetts” AND Amherst AND neuroscience’ in PubMed. These publications appeared online this summer. 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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New Neuroscience Faculty Members

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The Neuroscience Community at UMass is expanding with the addition of two new faculty members.

Sally Kim, is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Amherst College who joined the UMass Neuroscience and Behavior program as graduate faculty this summer. Dr. Kim completed her PhD. at University of Texas, Houston followed by work as a Postdoctoral Scholar at the California Institute of Technology and Research Scientist at Stanford University.

Her research interests are fueled by a passion for understanding the molecular basis of autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders after working with children in a psychiatric hospital post undergraduate studies. Her lab is studying the role of zinc as a dynamic regulator for synaptic signaling and function using an interdisciplinary approach of molecular, cellular, biochemical, and optical methods. Their research seeks to understand the basic mechanisms of zinc signaling in neurons and bridge this understanding for potential translational applications for autism and neurodegeneration. To tackle these questions, they develop novel tools to gain access to the necessary molecular, spatial and temporal domains to dissect these pathways.

Joyita Dutta is a new Associate Professor in the department of Biomedical Engineering in the College of Engineering at UMass. Professor Dutta completed her PhD. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California in 2011. Following the completion of her PhD., Dr. Dutta began work as a Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School and Mass General Hospital where she later began teaching. She began her career in the University of Massachusetts system at Lowell in 2015.

Her expertise is in biomedical image reconstruction and analysis and her research interests include signal processing and machine learning techniques for imaging (e.g. PET, MRI), graph (e.g. brain network), and time-series (e.g., accelerometry, ECG) datasets; multimodality information integration for image reconstruction, processing, and analysis, along with applications to neurology: Tau and amyloid imaging and graph-based brain network analysis for Alzheimer’s disease.

Director’s Channel – June 2022

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Paul Katz
IONs Director, Paul Katz

The Interdisciplinary Neurosciences Conference that we held in person last week was a great success. We had over 100 people register. The talks and posters generated a lot of discussion. This week we are continuing the theme of Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence with two hands-on workshops to learn how to use MATLAB to apply Machine Learning techniques to neuroscience data. We are also pleased to announce the recipients of the Inspiration Awards. These graduate students and postdocs truly are inspirations in how they are working across neuroscience, engineering, and computer science in innovative and creative ways. Please take a moment to look at the projects that they proposed. My hope is that these trainees will help lead UMass to the next level of neuroscience research that is truly interdisciplinary.

UMass Neurosciences Publications – May 2022

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This month’s featured researcher in Michael Barresi, who is a Professor of Biological Sciences at Smith College. His lab studies neural and glial development in zebrafish. Michael received his PhD as Wesleyan University and did postdoctoral research in Rolf Karlstrom’s lab at UMass, before joining the faculty at Smith College. He has a recent publication in the journal, Developmental Neurobiology that provides a comprehensive account of the cells that correlate with the timing and position of commissural axon pathfinding in the early forebrain that may be necessary for proper commissure development.

Here’s what else is new for ‘ ”University of Massachusetts” AND Amherst AND neuroscience’ in PubMed. These publications appeared online in May. 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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Director’s Channel – May 2022

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Paul Katz
Paul Katz, IONs Director

I’m excited that we will be holding the first in-person UMass Interdisciplinary Neurosciences Conference in three years on Thursday, May 26th in the Student Union Ballroom. We have two outstanding keynote speakers, Irina Rish and Tatyana Sharpee who each approach the intersection of Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence from different angles. In addition, we will have five UMass speakers and over 30 posters from researchers at UMass. The merging of the fields of biological and machine learning is an exciting new direction.

We had a great response to our call for Inspiration Award proposals. We received twenty proposals from graduate students and postdocs in ten departments across four colleges for research projects at the interface of neuroscience and either engineering or computer sciences. We will announce the winners of the awards at the Interdisciplinary Neurosciences Conference.

I am also excited to announce that we will be hosting a two-part hands-on workshop by MathWorks on Thursday June 2nd to help researchers use MATLAB to apply Machine Learning to data analysis. We will have a listen and learn informational session on Thursday May 26th at 11am just before the Interdisciplinary Neurosciences Conference.

I’m looking forward to seeing all of you later this month.

UMass IONs announces 2022 Inspiration Award winners

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The Initiative on Neurosciences is pleased to announce the winners of the Inspiration Awards for Neuroscience and Technology. These awards were made directly to graduate students and postdoctoral research associates for research projects that intersect neuroscience with either computer science or engineering technology.

Twenty proposals were submitted from applicants in ten departments across four colleges. The three main criteria used in judging were creativity, feasibility, and integration of neuroscience with either computer science or engineering. We are hopeful that the winning proposals will lead to larger projects and continued collaboration in the future of merging neuroscience and technology. We are thrilled to announce the winners below, along with the abstracts accompanying their proposals. All awardees were recognized at the 3rd annual IONs Interdisciplinary Neurosciences Conference on May 26.

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UMass Neurosciences Publications – April 2022

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This month’s featured researcher is Gottfried Schlaug, who wears many hats. He is an adjunct Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, the Scientific Director of the Human Magnetic Resonance Imaging (hMRI) Center in the Institute of Applied Life Sciences (IALS), and a physician at Baystate Health. He is also a featured speaker at the UMass Interdisciplinary Neurosciences Conference on May 26th. His lab is investigating new ways to use hMRI not only as a diagnostic tool, but for therapy too. This month he has two papers that appeared in PubMed. One is a consensus statement in Nature Protocols: “A checklist for assessing the methodological quality of concurrent tES-fMRI studies“. the other is a collaboration with Finnish and Danish researchers, “Neuroanatomical correlates of speech and singing production in chronic post-stroke aphasia” that was published in Brain Communications.

Here’s what else is new for ‘ ”University of Massachusetts” AND Amherst AND neuroscience’ in PubMed. These publications appeared online in April. 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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Director’s Channel – April 2022

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Paul Katz
IONs Director, Paul Katz

We had a great response to the IONs Inspiration Award Competition. We received twenty applications from students and postdocs in seven departments across three colleges. We have assembled a panel of reviewers and will announce the winners next month.

Don’t forget to register to present a poster at this year’s UMass Interdisciplinary Neurosciences Conference. The deadline for registration is April 22nd. The conference will take place on Thursday May 26th. We have two outstanding keynote speakers as well as UMass speakers.

We are planning to host a workshop prior to the conference on the use of MATLAB for AI analysis. We could still use your input to help shape that workshop. Please fill out this brief survey to let us know what you would like to get out of the workshop.

If you missed Friday’s April Fools Day announcement, check out it out here. Don’t miss the SpongeBob SquarePants reference.

UMass Neurosciences Publications – March 2022

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Youngbin Kwak

This month’s Featured Researcher, Youngbin Kwak, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Youngbin is interested in the brain mechanisms that can bias decision-making in humans. Her lab has an upcoming paper in the journal Cortex that appeared PubMed recently showing changes in brain waves that corresponded to when subjects expected a larger reward when executing a movement.

Here’s what else is new for ‘ ”University of Massachusetts” AND Amherst AND neuroscience’ in PubMed. These publications appeared online in March. 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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Brennan Falcy awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

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Brennan Falcy, an NSB graduate student in Ilia Karatsoreos’s lab, was awarded a prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF). The award aims to fund research that demonstrates rigorous intellectual merit as well as the potential for broader impacts for our society.

Brennan graduated with a B.S. in Neuroscience from UCLA in 2018. He came to UMass to work with Ilia Karatsoreos, where he could apply his neuroscience background to ask questions related to circadian biology and cellular metabolism. Brennan’s proposed research aims to study the dynamic interactions of astrocytes and neurons over the circadian period. Neurons exhibit 24-hour rhythmic fluctuations in excitability. Brennan will test the hypothesis that this phenomenon originates from rhythmic astrocytic input of redox-buffering metabolites. He will perform electrophysiology on cultured neurons and record the response of neurons to oxidative challenges in the presence and absence of astrocytes at different times of day. Brain activity – from the cellular level to the network level – is rhythmic across the 24-hour period. Uncovering how neuronal function is influenced, for example by astrocytes, is critical to understanding emergent functions such as cognition. Further, discovering how brain cell function changes over the circadian period has implications for time-of-day phenomena, such as sleep or susceptibility to injury. 

As a former undergraduate transfer student himself, he works to help demystify grad school to undergraduate transfer students. In his free time he enjoys running and exploring the outdoors of New England. On behalf of IONs and NSB, congratulations, Brennan!

Consciousness revealed

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04/01/2022. UMass neuroscientists announced today that they had discovered the source of human consciousness. Lead researcher, Arby Jenkins said, “It’s really surprising because it has been staring us in the face all these years and somehow nobody every noticed.”

Looking for the seat of consciousness.

It turned out people were looking in all the wrong places. “Years ago, Crick had proposed that the habenula was the seat of consciousness, but he was basically too deep.”, said Jenkins, who is known for superficiality.

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Director’s Channel – March 2022

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Paul Katz
IONs Director, Paul Katz

I am very excited to announce that after a two year hiatus we will once again host the Interdisciplinary Neurosciences Conference. This year, the talks will be focused on the interface between Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence. There will be two outside speakers and five UMass faculty speakers. In addition, as before, we will have an evening poster session. UMass has a historical strength in reinforcement learning. This conference will be a chance for Neuroscientists, Computer Scientists, and Engineers to learn from each other. The conference also dovetails with the IONs Inspiration Awards for Neuroscience & Technology, which is an opportunity for UMass graduate students and postdocs to receive funding for research proposals that use new technology or employ existing methodologies in new ways to address problems in neuroscience or problems inspired by neuroscience. The deadline for application is March 25th.

Student Spotlight – Parag Juvale

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This month’s student spotlight is on Parag Juvale, an MCB student in Dr. Sarah Pallas’s lab. Parag recently received 2 awards to support his research: The Sigma Xi Grants in Aid of Research (GIAR) and The UMass Amherst Graduate School’s Pre-Dissertation Research Grant. His research interests broadly include using biochemistry and molecular biology techniques to investigate the cellular signaling pathways underlying activity-dependent brain plasticity, and in his current work, these grants will help him investigate the synaptic factors that lead to visual plasticity during adulthood.

After completing his B.Sc. in Microbiology in Pune, India, Parag earned a M.Sc. in Cancer Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Leicester, where he completed his M.Sc. thesis at the Medical Research Council (MRC)’s Toxicology Unit, Leicester, U.K. Parag worked for a few years in India before moving to Georgia State University for his Ph.D. and later transferring to UMass Amherst in 2019 with Dr. Pallas. In the coming year, he looks forward to completing his dissertation research and preparing for what is next. Parag aims to work in academia long-term where he will continue researching the cellular mechanisms underlying activity-dependent plasticity.

On behalf of the IONs community, congratulation to Parag!