This month’s featured researcher is Sarah Pallas. Sarah joined the Biology Department at UMass in September 2019, arriving from Georgia State University.  Her lab studies the mechanisms underlying development, plasticity, and evolution of sensory pathways in the brain. Her latest paper in PubMed shows that gradients of growth factors and receptors change in response to brain injury. This helps adjust maps of the visual world in the brain constant despite loss of brain tissue. Sarah also has a collaborative project with a lab in Chile that studies the visual system of a diurnal South American rodent called a Degu.

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

1: Santiago J, Akeman E, … Martell C, … Aupperle RL. Protocol for a randomized controlled trial examining multilevel prediction of response to behavioral activation and exposure-based therapy for generalized anxiety disorder. Trials. 2020 Jan 6;21(1):17. doi: 10.1186/s13063-019-3802-9. PubMed PMID: 31907032; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6943897.

2: Kevadiya BD, Ottemann B, … Castellanos L, Sikora K, … Vachet RW, Gendelman HE. Rod-shape theranostic nanoparticles facilitate antiretroviral drug biodistribution and activity in human immunodeficiency virus susceptible cells and tissues. Theranostics. 2020 Jan 1;10(2):630-656. doi: 10.7150/thno.39847. eCollection 2020. PubMed PMID: 31903142; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6929995.

3: Workman KP, Healey B, Carlotto A, Lacreuse A. One-year change in cognitive flexibility and fine motor function in middle-aged male and female marmosets (Callithrix jacchus). Am J Primatol. 2019 Feb;81(2):e22924. doi:10.1002/ajp.22924. Epub 2018 Oct 3. PubMed PMID: 30281810; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6816503.

4: Grieb ZA, Vitale EM, Morrell JI, Lonstein JS, Pereira M. Decreased
mesolimbic dopaminergic signaling underlies the waning of maternal caregiving across the postpartum period in rats. Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2020 Jan 11. doi: 10.1007/s00213-019-05441-7. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 31927604.

5: Cheng Q, Graves MD, Pallas SL. Dynamic Alterations of Retinal EphA5 Expression in Retinocollicular Map Plasticity. Dev Neurobiol. 2019 Mar;79(3):252-267. doi: 10.1002/dneu.22675. Epub 2019 Apr 1. Erratum in: Dev Neurobiol. 2019 Apr;79(4):387. PubMed PMID: 30916472; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6506164.

6: Lee NS, Beery AK. Neural Circuits Underlying Rodent Sociality: A Comparative Approach. Curr Top Behav Neurosci. 2019;43:211-238. doi: 10.1007/7854_2018_77. PubMed PMID: 30710222; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC6677639