The NSB community gathered for a Town Hall during the second week of the semester.  Over 50 faculty members, postdocs and students participated in multiple, lively conversations about our program--qualities we appreciate and wish to amplify, as well as areas for improvement. The Town Hall culminated in a walk across the lawn for a group photo.

In a paper recently published in the journal e-Neuro, NSB doctoral recipient Matthew LaClair and his advisor Agnes Lacreuse examined what is a highly controversial topic in humans, by turning to the nonhuman primate, the common marmoset. The investigators asked whether biological sex modulates some aspects of cognitive performance as well as neural connectivity measures. They identified sex differences in cognitive flexibility that are correlated with sex-dependent patterns of resting brain networks.  The findings support the idea that cognitive sex differences may have identifiable intrinsic neural correlates. Investigating the dynamics of cognitive sex differences and associated brain networks across the lifespan may shed a new light on sex-specific cognitive disorders.

Sex differences in cognitive flexibility and resting brain networks in middle-aged marmosets.
M. LaClair, M. Febo, B. Nephew, N.J. Gervais, G. Poirier, K. Workman, S. Chumachenko, L. Payne, M.C. Moore, J.A. King, A. Lacreuse, eNeuro. 1 July 2019, ENEURO.015419.2019; DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0154-19.2019

Developmental psychologist Kirby Deater-Deckard, Psychological and Brain Sciences, Neurosciecne and Behavior Graduate Program, is a co-investigator on a recently renewed five-year, $3.7 million grant from the NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse to support a research team studying the environmental and neurobiological risk factors that influence brain development and healthy versus unhealthy decision-making in adolescence and early adulthood. Read more

Results of a new study by neuroscientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst suggest that a new treatment approach is needed – and how this may be possible – to address adverse effects of aromatase inhibitors, drugs commonly prescribed to both men and women to prevent recurrence of estrogen-positive breast cancer.

Neuroscientists Agnès Lacreuse, Luke Remage-Healey and their graduate students at UMass Amherst, collaborator Jessica Mong at the University of Maryland and first author Nicole Gervais worked together on this research. Gervais, who conducted the experiments as a postdoctoral researcher at UMass Amherst, is now at the University of Toronto. The authors studied a small group of aged male and female marmosets, non-human primates whose brains are much like humans’ and which exhibit “complex behavior,” senior author Lacreuse explains. (Read more)