Thalia Taylor, a third-year PhD student in the NSB program, won the Honda Outstanding Student Paper Award at the International Conference on Driving Assessment in Tahoe, California in June of 2011.

Lauri Kurdziel and Hanna King, graduate students in the NSB Program won the first Media Contest from the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology for their K-12 movie, "The influence of hormones across the life-span."  The award was presented and the movie was shown at the annual meeting of the Society in Queretaro, Mexico in June, 2011.

Rosie Combs-Bachmann, a doctoral student in the NSB Program, was co-winner of second place in the 2011 Spring Innovation Challenge, held on April 28, 2011 by the UMass Isenberg Program for the Integration of Management, Engineering and Science.

Wanette Vargas, a second year graduate student in the Neuroscience and Behavior Program, was awarded a travel scholarship from the Society for Advancing Hispanics/Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) Travel Scholarship  to attend the 2010 SACNAS National Conference held in Anaheim, California on October 2010. She presented the poster emtitled: "Effect of binge drinking during adolescence on the anterior corpus callosum."

NIH’s Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse recently awarded Dr. Heather N. Richardson a $400,000 grant.  Dr. Richardson’s Neurobiology of Stress and Addiction Laboratory will use a rodent model of voluntary binge drinking to investigate how alcohol impacts myelinated axons within the prefrontal cortex.  This part of the brain plays an executive role in controlling emotions and making decisions, but it is one of the last brain regions to mature. This work could have important implications for understanding how risky drinking in teenagers might alter myelinization of neural circuits to have long-lasting consequences on psychiatric health.  

"Changing Neuroestrogens Within the Auditory Forebrain Rapidly Transform Stimulus Selectivity in a Downstream Sensorimotor Nucleus" by Luke Remage-Healey and Narendra R. Joshi, an Amherst College undergraduate, was accepted at the Journal of Neuroscience.  This is the first (of many to come) totally independent journal article from the Remage-Healey lab.

How does sleep (or lack of it) impact your life? Learn about the function of sleep with Dr. Rebecca Spencer

The College of Natural Sciences presents “Sleep On It: The Power of Sleep” with renowned sleep researcher Dr. Rebecca Spencer at the NATURES public lecture on April 26, 2012.

Dr. Spencer, an assistant professor in the Psychology Department at UMass Amherst, studies the impact of sleep on learning and its effect on memory as people age. Her recent findings—covered in scientific publications such as the Journal of Neuroscience and Journal of Sleep Research as well as in media such as The New York Times, USA Today, and O, The Oprah Magazine—include scientific substantiation of the old advice to “sleep on it” when trying to make a decision and not sleeping after a traumatic event can lessen its emotional impact.

In her NATURES lecture, Dr. Spencer will discuss the impact of sleep on cognitive function across the lifespan.

Dr. Spencer’s NATURES presentation is at 5:30 PM in the O'Connor Lecture Hall (Room 221) in the Integrated Sciences Building, 661 North Pleasant Street, on the UMass Amherst campus. A reception will follow the presentation.

NATURES, sponsored by the College of Natural Sciences, is a series of faculty presentations discussing ongoing research that has implications for everyone.