The Program in Neuroscience and Education of the Department of Biobehavioral Sciences at Teachers College, Columbia University is pleased to announce a lecture series on current issues in neuroscience. Each week we will discuss a variety of topics on the frontiers of neuroscience, from neurological disorders to development and neuroimmunology. Some of the most accomplished investigators in neuroscience from top universities in the NYC area will be presenting new developments in their leading-edge research.
The lectures series is proudly co-sponsored by the Teachers College Vice President’s Diversity and Community Initiatives Grant Fund.
Below are links to each of the Spring 2014 Neuroscience Lectures at Teachers College, Columbia University. All lectures are recorded and will be posted for the Columbia University community as they become available.
Mondays at 3pm, January 27-May 12, 2014
Cowin Center (147 Horace Mann Building)
Teachers College, Columbia University
525 W 120th Street
New York, New York 10027-6696
Directions
Free and Open to the Public
Individuals with disabilities are invited to request reasonable accommodations. To request disability-related accommodations contact OASID at oasid@tc.columbia.edu, (212) 678-3689, (212) 678-3853 TTY, (646) 755-3144 video phone, as early as possible.
Dr. Amodio is part of the Social Neuroscience laboratory, were they focus in researching the roles of social cognition and emotion in the regulation of behavior, and the neural mechanisms underlying these processes. Much of his work examines these processes in the context of prejudice and stereotyping, although he also is interested in the areas of motivation and health psychology.
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Dr. Champagne focuses her main research on how genetic and environmental factors interact to regulate maternal behavior; and how natural variations in this behavior can shape the behavioral development of offspring through epigenetic changes in gene expression in a brain region specific manner.
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Dr. Ferrera’s research interest focuses in the neural mechanisms underlying cognitive and behavioral flexibility, having the ability adapt to changing circumstances. The Ferrera laboratory uses neurophysiological and functional imaging approaches to understand how the brain weighs evidence, adjusts decision criteria, and evaluates reward outcomes. They are especially interested in the neural mechanisms by which reward influences attention, especially in the context of socially rewarding stimuli such as faces.
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Dr. Friedman’s research interest lies in analyzing ERPs and performance measures to investigate the neurocognitive processes underlying everyday functions, such as memory encoding and retrieval and executive control. His approach bases on a lifespan data collection (children, adolescents, young and older adults). This method will aims to understand how these processes change throughout the life span in health and disease, and in elucidating their neural underpinnings.
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Dr. Hart’s major research focus is to understand complex interactions between drugs of abuse and the neurobiology and environmental factors that mediate human behavior and physiology. He states three major potential application of his work: 1) develop new theories about the neurochemical basis of several human behaviors; 2) inform public policy about the benefits and risks of drug use; and 3) guide the development of medications for drug abuse.
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Dr. Martin focuses in researching spinal cord injury and the development of motor behavior. Concentrating in developing new understanding of the connections between the brain and spinal cord that control movement addressing brain development as well as recovery of movement function after brain or spinal injury, translating it to therapies for humans with mobility impairments.
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Dr. McErwen research focuses in studying how stress and sex hormones act on the brain, taking an interdisciplinary approach that combines behavioral analysis and measurements of hormone levels with neurochemical, morphological, neuropharmacological, cellular and molecular methodologies and collaborative translational studies.
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Dr. Nestler laboratory studies the molecular mechanisms of drug addiction and depression in animal models. Here they focus on the molecular and cellular changes that occur in regions of the brain important for reward and motivation, in response to chronic administration of a drug of abuse or chronic exposure to stress. He has a particular interest in long-lasting changes, that are mediated via alterations in gene expression and chromatin remodeling. His goal is to achieve results that will guide future efforts toward the development of more effective treatments for addiction and depression.
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Dr. Pfaff concentrates his research in examining the cellular mechanisms by which the brain controls behavior, using neuroanatomical, neurochemical and neurophysiological methods. Specifically the Neurobiology and Behavior Laboratory explores steroid hormone effects on nerve cells as they direct natural and instinctive behaviors, as well as the influences of hormones and genes on generalized brain arousal.
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Dr. Scharfman research interest has focused on mechanisms controlling neuronal excitability and plasticity and their implications for diseases such as epilepsy, Alzheimer, and women’s health.
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Dr. Morrison’s research interest focus in understanding the consequences of mechanical forces on the central nervous system, and to develop strategies to mitigate, and perhaps repair post-traumatic injury, investigation conducted in the Neurotrauma and repair laboratory.
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Dr. Shapiro is a part of the Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience of Memory Laboratory. Here he focus his research in how neural circuits processing is altered so that information is encoded, stored, and then later retrieved in appropriate circumstances. His lab samples neuronal activity from specific parts of the brain that are needed to perform a particular cognitive function, and attempt to decode the signal to understand how these systems need the neural networks to represent the information in memory and guide behavior.
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Dr. Toth’s research centers around Non-DNA mediated transmission of behavior across generations, and maternal programming of brain development and adult emotional and cognitive behavior in health and disease.
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Dr. Woolley’s main research interest is to understand how the brain forms neural representations of communication vocalizations, and how these neural representations lead to the perception of socially meaningful information. She uses behavioral, electrophysiological, pharmacological and computational data analysis techniques to investigate how vocal neural coding is shaped by developmental experience, learning, and species identity, and to study how the brain specially encodes the acoustic features that are critical for song recognition.
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