Student Spotlight – Hui Wei

Hui Wei is a third-year Computer Science PhD student in the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences, where he works under supervision of Prof. Benjamin Marlin in the Robust and Efficient Machine Learning (REML) lab. His research interest is applying machine learning to improving human health. Currently, he is working on machine learning for mobile health and the missing value problem in the time series data. Previously, Hui was working on evaluating the clinical diagnostic accuracy of dementia subtypes, with Prof. Narges Razavian in the Department of Population Health, NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

His recent publication in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience compares the diagnosis in the clinic with autopsy results on Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body disease and their combination with respect to different Clinical Dementia Rating stages. They demonstrate the diagnosis of these dementia subtypes is inaccurate and also suffers from the significant disparity in race and sex.

UMass Neurosciences Publications – March 2023

Lucy Xiaolu Wang

This month’s featured researcher is Dr. Lucy Xiaolu Wang. Lucy is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Resource Economics in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. She is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Germany and a Faculty Associate at the Canadian Centre for Health Economics. In March, she and a collaborator published an article in The Conversation, describing her economic analysis published in PLoSOne of the Human Brain Project (HBP), a controversial $1.3 billlion European initiative that was originally led by Henry Markham. They examined the user interactions on the HBP public-access online forum to determine the value of online collaborative platforms.

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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Undergraduate Student Spotlight – Yesha Patel

Yesha Patel is a senior Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and Economics dual degree undergraduate student as well as a member of the Commonwealth Honors College at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. On campus, Yesha has been a TA in the Biology department for the last two years and is in the Minutemen Equity Fund. Since she was a sophomore, Yesha has been working summers in Dr. Ella Zeldich’s lab at Boston University’s School of Medicine. She is an author on a paper that was recently published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, titled “Extracellular Vesicle Treatment Alleviates Neurodevelopmental and Neurodegenerative Pathology in Cortical Spheroid Model of Down Syndrome

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UMass Neurosciences Publications – Winter 2023

Benjamin Marlin

This month’s featured researcher in Benjamin Marlin. Ben is an Associate Professor in the Manning College of Information and Computer Science, where he directs the Robust and Efficient Machine Learning (REML) group. Their work is s research is informed by real-world applications including clinical and mobile health. He was an author on paper that was published in January in the Journal Translational Behavioral Medicine, which describes some of the efforts of the Intensive Longitudinal Health Behaviors Network (ILHBN) to harmonize data collection across many different studies and data streams. Ben is also and Associate Director of the Massachusetts AI & Technology Center for Connected Care in Aging & Alzheimer’s Disease (MassAITC), which fosters the development of artificial intelligence for technology that support healthy aging at home for older adults and individuals with Alzheimer’s disease.

Here’s what else is new for ‘ ”University of Massachusetts” AND Amherst AND neuroscience’ in PubMed. These publications appeared online in January and 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 Neurosciences Publications – December 2022

Gerald Downes

This month’s featured researcher is Dr. Gerald Downes, who is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology. His lab uses zebrafish to understand how genes and neural networks in the brain and spinal cord control movement. They are also studying mechanisms that contribute to epilepsy with the hope of developing new therapeutics to treat these disorders. He and his PhD students are authors on a paper titled, “Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis-Associated Persistent Organic Pollutant cis-Chlordane Causes GABAA-Independent Toxicity to Motor Neurons, Providing Evidence toward an Environmental Component of Sporadic Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis“, which appeared this month in Chemical Neuroscience. This work was a collaboration with researchers at Wesleyan University.

Here’s what else is new for ‘ ”University of Massachusetts” AND Amherst AND neuroscience’ in PubMed. These publications appeared online in December. 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 Neurosciences Publications – November 2022

Dr. Agnès Lacreuse

This month’s featured research is Dr. Agnès Lacreuse. Agnès is a Professor in the Department Psychological & Brain Sciences. Her work is focused on age-related cognitive decline in a nonhuman primate with a short lifespan, the common marmoset (C. jacchus). Research from her lab recently appeared in the journal, Hormones and Behavior, showing that Letrozole, an aromatase inhibitor used in breast cancer treatment, alters gene expression in neurons of the hippocampus, a region of the brain involved with memory. The first author on this intriguing study was Melise Edwards, a PhD student in the Neuroscience and Behavior Graduate Program.

Here’s what else is new for ‘ ”University of Massachusetts” AND Amherst AND neuroscience’ in PubMed. These publications appeared online in November. 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 Neurosciences Publications – October 2022

Dr. Rebecca Spencer

This month’s featured researcher is Dr. Rebecca Spencer. Bekki is a Professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, where she runs the Somneurolab, dedicated to studying the neuroscience of sleep. She recently authored a publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, titled, “Contributions of memory and brain development to the bioregulation of naps and nap transitions in early childhood” in which she and her co-author, Tracy Riggins propose that nap transitions are more related to hippocampal development than age specifically. The story has received a lot of attention in the press, including the Boston Globe. You can read about it from the College of Natural Sciences.

Here’s what else is new for ‘ ”University of Massachusetts” AND Amherst AND neuroscience’ in PubMed. These publications appeared online in October. 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 SfN 2022 Presentations

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

Sharon Owino joins NSB

Dr. Sharon Owino

Dr. Sharon Owino is the newest faculty member in the UMass Neuroscience & Behavior Graduate Program. Dr. Owino is an Assistant Professor at Smith College and is how the fourth NSB faculty member from the Five College Community. Her lab researches the role of G protein-coupled receptor signaling in the regenerative capacity of the brain following stroke. She majored in biomedical engineering at Georgia Tech and received her PhD at Morehouse School of Medicine. She then did postdoctoral research at Emory University before starting her lab at Smith. Dr. Owino recently presented her work at a Weds NSB Colloquium titled, “Targeting G protein-coupled receptors to modulate central nervous system repair following injury.”

Greg Pearson wins two awards to attend Society for Neuroscience conference

The NSB program is happy to announce that Greg Pearson (3rd year PhD student in the Karatsoreos Lab) has won a Trainee Professional Development Award (TDPA) to attend the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) conference in San Diego. The competitive TPDA recognizes undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who demonstrate scientific merit and excellence in research. 

We are also excited that Greg’s SfN abstract, exploring how the circadian clock alters the impact of viral inflammatory stimuli that access the brain via the intranasal route, was chosen for a NanoString Technologies Travel Grant. Congratulations Greg!