Current Works in Behavior, Genetics, and Neuroscience series!
Friday, 3/11 at 11:35am-12:05pm in hybrid format; in-person in K207 and on zoom.
For those joining in-person, we will be located in Kirtland room 207.
For those joining virtually, here is the zoom link: https://yale.zoom.us/j/98731864720
Please find the title and abstract for Lucinda and Prabaha’s talks below.
“Examining multivariate associations between early life stress exposure and white matter microstructure. ”
Lucinda Sisk
Ph.D. Student in Neuroscience Area, Department of Psychology, Yale University
Microstructural remodeling of white matter pathways represents one potential mechanism linking childhood trauma exposure with mental health across development. However, the degree to which specific dimensions of trauma exposure—such as the type or developmental timing of a traumatic experience—may uniquely impact developing white matter has yet to be elucidated. Delineating links between childhood trauma, neurobiology, and psychopathology is critical to developing targeted treatments and identifying optimal windows for intervention following trauma exposure. In this talk, I will present ongoing work leveraging a multivariate modeling approach to examine linked dimensions of trauma exposure and white matter tract integrity.
“Encoding of social behaviors by putative excitatory and inhibitory neurons in the primate brain”
Prabaha Gangopadhyay
Ph.D. Student in Neuroscience Area, Department of Psychology, Yale University
Accumulating evidence indicates that multiple brain regions in the prefrontal-amygdala networks are involved in social attention and social decision-making. However, it remains unclear how various neurons in these regions mechanistically orchestrate different social behaviors. Although recent work from rodents has found differential roles of excitatory (E) and inhibitory(I) neurons and the importance of E/I balance in social behaviors, it remains unknown if such specializations exist in the primate brain for guiding social behaviors. Here, we hypothesized that neural signals from excitatory and inhibitory neurons might have different roles in encoding social decision and social gaze interaction variables. To this end, we analyzed single-neuron activity from multiple prefrontal regions and the amygdala, while pairs of monkeys were engaged in social decision-making and naturalistic, spontaneous, social gaze interaction. Based on the waveforms of their action potentials, we split the recorded pool of neurons into putative excitatory (broad-spiking) and inhibitory (narrow-spiking) units. In this talk, I will present the preliminary data on the difference, or lack thereof, between broad-spiking and narrow-spiking neurons in signaling social behavioral variables in the prefrontal-amygdala networks. I will also discuss what my preliminary results so far informs us about the neural mechanisms underlying social behavior.