Congratulations to Giovanna, a former UR undergraduate, who spent a summer and fall with us in 2015, contributing data on thalamo-amygdala connections. Giovanna was also a strong advocate for women's health in her undergraduate career, winning a Susan B. Anthony Undergraduate Leadership Award. Best wishes moving forward on these next important steps in your career!

Naomi Boxman, a double major in Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Psychology, wrote and defended her thesis entitled Insula-Amygdala connections and the Von Economo Neurons:? A Substrate for Empathy on May 8, 2020.

Her senior advisor is Dr. Renee Miller.

Naomi plans to spend the upcoming year working in clinical mental health care while applying to graduate school programs.

Click in to the UR Research Exposition 2020 (Natural Sciences category) to see Apoorva and other UR undergraduates show their work: https://www.rochester.edu/college/ugresearch/events/expo.html

Apoorva's work, which she has pursued over 3 semesters, is entitled 'Pregenual and Subgenual Anterior Cingulate regulate Emotional Processing together in Specific Amygdala Subdivisions'. The amygdala codes the emotional relevance of sensory cues, and is modulated by feedback from the prefrontal cortex. Specifically, separate nodes of the prefrontal cortex anterior cingulate (ACC) modulate 'salience' detection (of novel, and potentially biologic stimuli) and 'social monitoring' (detection of others' actions), respectively. Apoorva's data show that while the ACC's 'salience' projection targets broad regions of the amygdala, the 'social monitoring' node projects to more focused regions of the amygdala, overlapping 'salience' afferents in these regions. Her data suggest that there are sub-circuits in the amygdala devoted to processing salient social stimuli.

Introducing Nya Robinson, UR Class of 2023 and McNair Scholar. Nya is passionate about brain mechanisms of neurologic and neuropsychiatric illness, and will be 'Zooming' with us this Summer to brainstorm a research project once labs are back open. Welcome!