Category Archives: Publications

UMass Neurosciences Publications – November 2019

This month’s featured researcher is Guangyu Xu. Guangyu is an assistant professor in the the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering. He was recently appointed to the Dev and Linda Gupta Professorship. Guangyu joined UMass in 2016, before which he was a postdoc at MIT with Ed Boyden, who presented the November Neuroscience Distinguished Lecture. Guangyu runs the Integrated Nanobiotechnology Laboratory, which builds tools for subcellular molecular detection that have important uses in Neuroscience. His most recent paper in iScience demonstrates a technology for optogenetic control of intracellular calcium dynamics using micro-LEDs, which may allow for more efficient pharmaceutical screening of drugs and fundamental studies on a variety of cell networks.

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. Continue reading →

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UMass Neurosciences Publications – October 2019

This month’s featured researcher is Rebecca Spencer. Bekki is a professor in Psychological and Brain Sciences. She runs the Somneurolab, which studies many aspects of sleep and brain functions affected by sleep. As people age, sleep and memory. The lab has funding from the National Institute of Aging to study how sleep quality decreases and memory impairments increase in older adults. They also have funding from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to study the benefits of midday naps for preschool children. Her recent publication with post-doc Bethany Jones, which appeared in the journal Neurobiology of Learning and Memory shows that sleep helps consolidate aspects of emotional responses that are associated with memories.

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. Continue reading →

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UMass Neurosciences Publications – Sept 2019

This month’s featured researcher is Eric Bittman. Eric is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Biology. His lab studies the molecular and neural bases for circadian rhythms. His most recent paper appears in the Journal of Biological Rhythms. He recently showed how certain gene alleles alter the function of the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus in ways that may contribute to changes in circadian rhythms.

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

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UMass Neurosciences Publications – August 2019

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 →

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UMass Neurosciences Publications – July 2019

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 →

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UMass Neurosciences Publications – June 2019

This month’s featured Researcher is Luke Remage-Healey. He recently received a renewal of $1.7 million grant from NIH to investigate fundamental mechanisms of how the bird brain learns and processes complex stimuli like song.  In general, his lab studies how neural circuits for vocal communication are modulated by the actions of local neurochemicals. For example, changing levels of brain estrogens can alter the pattern or ‘tone’ of neural circuit activity, enabling many flexible outputs from the same circuit. They think this modulation allows interconnected forebrain circuits to subserve a wide variety of complex behaviors, like singing, song learning, and song memory. Luke and his student Daniel Vahaba published a paper in the journal Hormones and Behavior that appeared this month in PubMed.

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. Continue reading →

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UMass Neurosciences Publications – May 2019

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 →

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UMass Neurosciences Publications – April 2019

This month’s featured researcher is Annaliese Beery, who is graduate faculty in Neuroscience & Behavior at UMass and an Associate Professor of Psychology at Smith College. She studies the neural basis for affiliative behaviors, which help support social groups. Her PhD student, Nicole Lee, who is a co-author on a recent paper was the co-recipient of the Vincent Dethier Award.

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

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Student Spotlight – Francesca Walsh

This month’s student spotlight is on MS student Franchesca Walsh. Fran is an MS student working with in Youngbin Kwak’s lab. She is interested in neuroeconomics. Together with her advisor and co-author Erik Cheries, she recently published a commentary entitled, “‘Incentive hope’ and the nature of impulsivity in low-socioeconomic-status individuals” in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (Cambridge University Press) in which they respond to Anselme and Gunturkun’s Incentive Hope Hypothesis. This motivation mechanism theory brings together neuroscience literature on reward uncertainty and decision making with biology field observations of animal foraging behavior. Continue reading →

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