Alev Ecevitoglu, Psychological Sciences

Current Research: The vast majority of rodent studies on effort-based choice have been conducted in males; however, women are more likely to develop depression than men. Thus, the current study focuses on finding novel treatments by taking a multidisciplinary approach (behavioral and neurochemical) to determine if novel atypical dopamine transporter (DAT) inhibitors can improve motivational dysfunction in female rats. Behavioral assessment of atypical DAT inhibitors: Effort-related motivational functions in female rats. Two novel DAT inhibitors from the NIDA laboratory of Dr. Amy Newman (JJC8-089 and RDS3-094) will be assessed in tests of effort-based decision making using: a) reversal of tetrabenazine-induced low-effort bias as assessed using the concurrent fixed ratio (FR) 5/chow feeding choice task, b) selection of high-effort lever pressing using the concurrent progressive ratio/chow feeding choice task after acute and repeated injections in females. It is hypothesized that both of these compounds will increase the exertion of effort. Pharmacodynamic characterization of the atypical DAT inhibitors in female rats: Microdialysis and pDARPP-32 expression. These compounds will also be tested for their neurochemical effects on nucleus accumbens DA transmission, using microdialysis, and expression of pDARPP-32(Thr34) to provide pre-and postsynaptic measures of DA transmission. It is hypothesized that both compounds will increase extracellular DA and pDARPP-32(Thr34) expression.

Jie Luo, Psychological Sciences

Current Research: My research interests intersect cognitive neuroscience, clinical psychopathology, and translational work in education. My current meta-analysis project, which is part of my Master’s is motivated by the following: (1) While past studies have conducted reviews of EWB neuroimaging studies to find the neural components of EWB, they are primarily qualitative reviews and not quantitative analysis, which may induce investigator bias. (2) EWB is closely associated with outcomes of neuropsychiatric disorders such as depression. By identifying neural components of EWB, we may ultimately understand brain-based phenotypes for predicting and optimizing the outcome of some neuropsychiatric disorders. In my current project and as part of my Master’s project, I plan to go beyond synthesis of the results and the current subjective definition of EWB based on prior observations, and develop a neurally-inspired theory of EWB. My Master's thesis committee includes: Prof. Crystal Park who specializes in clinical psychology, EWB and mind-body interventions, and Prof. Roeland Hancock whose expertise is in cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging meta-analysis. I have proposed my Master’s project and it has been approved. Two trained individuals independently screened, coded, and quality assessed each paper included in this meta-analysis. I am preparing to submit an abstract for the Association for Psychological Sciences Annual Conference (Washington DC, May 25 28, 2023) based on this work.

Jairo Orea, Physiology and Neurobiology

Current Research: Literature reports an understudied short latency circuit directly inputting MGm from the cochlear nucleus. To begin elucidating this non-cannonical circuit, we performed a preliminary set of injections with a reliable retrograde tracer injected in MGm and observed retrograde labeled cells in the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN) and more densely in the ventral cochlear nucleus (VCN). The current literature has only studied them with. anterograde or bidirectional tracers in rat. Therefore, we are now carefully mapping them to create the first set of comprehensively mapped retrograde tracer injections from MGm to the cochlear nucleus. I am continuing to conduct injections to provide more detailed mapping of the cochlear inputs into MGm. Determining these connections will allows us to link this circuit to the fear learning circuitry via genetic Cre-recombinase mediated transsynaptic viral tracing. Our preliminary transsynaptic tracing experiments in the MGB and auditory cortex showed transsynaptic transport and in doing so began delineating the challenges that this emerging technique may bring. It additionally sets novel precedent for a possible transsynaptic circuit from MGm/PIN to cortical cells that project directly to the lateral amygdala We have planned experiments to elucidate this circuit using cutting edge microscopic serial multiplexing technologies to improve single cell characterization and allowing synaptic verification at the electron microscope level.

Aleksandra Rusowicz, Psychological Sciences

Current Research: Continuing my interdisciplinary research in psychology and political science, I am currently working with Dr. Pratto and my secondary advisor, School of Nursing Professor Dr. Natalie Shook, to study prejudice and 2020 vote choice. Dr. Shook previously associated sexism, modern racism, and nationalism with 2016 presidential vote choice (Shook et al., 2020). She has since surveyed a large representative sample at multiple timepoints before and after the 2020 presidential election. We seek to replicate her 2016 findings and expand the study by considering the influence of social dominance orientation (SDO), right wing authoritarianism (RWA; Altemeyer, 1981), and disgust sensitivity on vote choice. I also plan to employ electroencephalography (EEG) to replicate Dr. Shook’s study of biased visual attention (Oosterhoff et al., 2018), which illustrated a positive relationship between disgust sensitivity and social conservatism. Neurophysiological studies have linked neural responses to disgust-inducing stimuli and political ideology (Smith et al., 2011; Ahn et al., 2014). I look to extend this research by grounding findings in social psychology theory (e.g., SDO, RWA) and measuring explicit prejudiced attitudes (e.g., sexism, modern racism). By leveraging my advisors’ theoretical and methodological expertise and my own background in neuroimaging, I aim to conduct a comprehensive interdisciplinary investigation of neurocognitive processes underlying prejudiced political attitudes.

Mohammadamin Saraei, Psychological Sciences

Current Research: Previous research has documented the synchronization of emotional responses in the context of collective action, but the mechanisms underpinning this synchrony are unknown. We do not know whether individuals are attuned to the same stimulus; synchronize to those around them; or engage in a more dynamical interaction where each individual syncs to group-level feedback. This is crucial in terms of understanding emotional contagion as well as the role of scale (group size). To answer this question, I will conduct a naturalistic experiment at UConn’s Islamic Center (ICUC), of which I am a member. At ICUC, members regularly perform collective prayers (Salat), in which the crowd, led by a priest (Imam) engages in synchronized bowing and chanting. In this context, I will use wearable sensors to measure emotional arousal, movement, and spatial proximity between participants. This equipment is unobtrusive, and will not interfere with the natural setting of the ritual. Measurements will be obtained from groups of varying sizes.

For analysis, I will obtain a distance matrix between participants and use Cross-Recurrence Quantification Analysis (CRQA) to measure synchrony between all pairs. This will allow me to determine whether people’s emotional responses are primarily attuned to the leader, their nearest neighbors, or to the group properties, such as the average group

Louisa Suting, Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences

Current Research: I recently concluded a pilot study that examined the effectiveness of a novel form of aphasia therapy- based on the principles of attentive reading and constraint summarization. The seven-week virtually administered therapy program was completed by five participants with post-stroke aphasia. The study was a multiple-probe, single-subject design in which each of the five participants served as their own control. Language measures included standardized tests (examining aphasia severity, reading comprehension and production, and functional communication) and spoken and written discourse measures (such as number and percent correct information units). Participants who completed the aphasia treatment demonstrated clinically significant improvement on the standardized tests and improved spoken and written discourse at micro-linguistic and macro-linguistic levels. We also collected Resting-State fMRI data at baseline, two weeks post-treatment, and again at the 5-month post-treatment in all the participants. I presented the preliminary findings of the study at the annual meeting of the Academy of Aphasia. In addition to the improvement in language and discourse measures, we also saw significant improvement in network measures, such as within network coherence in multiple resting state networks. Importantly, we found that the improvements in the coherence of the Language Network positively correlated with improvements in language measures.

Olivia Vanegas, Psychological Sciences

Current Research: My proposed project will assess the efficacy of minor cannabinoids for modulating chronic pain and emotionality. Minor cannabinoids are molecules produced by cannabis that share structural homology with the major cannabinoids THC and CBD. Pain shapes behavior in different ways. Therefore, I will use several different pain modalities (i.e., visceral, neuropathic, and inflammatory) as well as new pain-conditioned and pain-depressed measures, in addition to classic pain-stimulated measures, to guard against false positive analgesic effects. For example, I will use a Thermal Gradient Ring, which produces a range of thermal stimuli to shape stimulus-response relations in real-time, and conditioned place preference, which uses repeated drug/environment pairings to assess more subtle, context-specific pain effects and abuse liability. Although chronic pain, addiction, and psychiatric disorders frequently occur concomitantly in humans, they are often studied individually in experimental animal models. Given the well-established effects of THC on emotionality and preliminary data that minor cannabinoids bind to and activate serotonin receptors, it is likely that some minor cannabinoids also reduce anxiety or depression. Thus, I am training in mouse models of anxiety- and depressive-like behaviors to screen select compounds. Overall, my research in the Kinsey lab uses a multidisciplinary approach to investigate the relationship between pain and emotionality.

Christopher Babigian, Pharmaceutical Science

Current Research: Studies strongly support the involvement of BET proteins in drug-seeking behaviors but fail to address functional roles of individual BET proteins and BD-selective BET mechanisms (BD1 vs. BD2) involved in drug-seeking behaviors. Given the potential side effects linked to pan-BET inhibitors, (i.e., cognitive effects such as memory impairment) new approaches with a high degree of selectively and mechanistic insight are needed to advance BET therapeutics as a viable treatment option for SUD. My current studies build on promising data from our lab (mentioned in the previous section) by using selective, clinically relevant tools to interrogate domain-selective mechanisms of BET proteins in advanced animal models of cocaine use disorder (CUD). My hypothesis is that domain-selective BET inhibition will attenuate drug-seeking behaviors in advanced models of CUD without causing side effects commonly seen with non-selective approaches. Results from these experiments will uncover safer more selective therapeutic options for the treatment of CUD. Data collected from these experiments will be used as preliminary data for my NIH F31 application.

Specifically, I am investigating the impact of domain-selective BET inhibition on cocaine-seeking behaviors. For translational purposes I am testing RVX-208 in more advanced and clinically relevant animal models of CUD disorder (economic demand and extinction/reinstatement following short- and intermittent-access cocaine self-administration).

Cynthia Boo, Psychological Sciences

Current Research: As a part of Dr. Letitia Naigles and Dr. Deborah Fein’s Longitudinal Study of Early Language (Naigles & Fein, 2017), my current research has continued to compare language sampling contexts in children with ASD’s language abilities. I am investigating the production of stative language in teenagers with ASD across two different narrative contexts (storybook versus personal narratives). Studies have found that children with ASD are less likely to produce stative language (e.g., happy, think, confused) compared to their TD peers (Tager-Flusberg, 1992; Siller et al., 2014). However, most of these studies have been conducted solely in the context of storybook narratives, which may not be appropriate for adolescents with ASD. Additionally, Losh & Capps (2003) found differences in volume and complexity between storybook and personal narratives, suggesting that different prompts may afford different language use.

Preliminary findings from these analyses support the idea that language production varies by context. Overall, children from both groups produced fewer stative language terms in the context of storybook narratives than personal narratives. In other words, tapping into personal experiences, especially those with emotional associations, elicited more stative language regardless of diagnostic status. Thus, when assessing stative language production, researchers should consider the ability of the narrative prompt to elicit these terms.

Hayes Brenner, Psychological Sciences

Current Research: I am currently working with Dr. Edward Large in his music dynamics lab. I am contributing to the development, coding, and implementation of nonlinear oscillation networks within MATLAB. These networks seek to model the neurobiological process of rhythmic entrainment (i.e. syncing up to an external oscillating pattern) by mimicking the synchronous neuronal activity within the auditory and motor networks that occurs when one is listening to, and then entrains to, a rhythmic pulse. We hope to expand the scope of this model to encompass entertainment for both Western rhythms (i.e. 4/4 standard time signature) and non-Western rhythms (specifically, nonisochronus Balkan rhythms, typically in 7/4 time signature).

Shawn Cummings, Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences

Current Research: My current research at UConn reconsiders classic ideas in speech communication, specifically through the lens of the lexically guided perceptual recalibration paradigm. ~200 published manuscripts have used this paradigm or a variation since its conception by Norris et al. in 2003, and conventions have naturally developed in theoretical assumptions as well as experimental design. These have allowed for ease of access to important questions, but after two decades of research it is now worth specifically (1) re-examining the role of specific acoustic stimulus properties, especially tied to their method of creation, (2) questioning paradigmatic assumptions such as measuring learning as a between-subject effect, and (3) re- evaluating theoretical characterizations such as perceptual learning being ‘talker specific’.

This line of research is itself interdisciplinary: the paradigm of interest (how cognitive mechanisms deal with variation in sound to meaning mapping in speech) is relevant to and used by linguists, psychologists, speech scientists, cognitive scientists, and others. Understanding, describing, and evaluating the effects as we do –through marrying human behavioral data with an ‘ideal observer’ distributional learning model of incremental adaptation (Kleinschmidt & Jaeger 2015)—additionally connects artificial and biological systems.

Lee Drown, Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences

Current Research: Our work will continue to examine the interplay between voice and phonetic processing by investigating the clinical implications of the individual differences associated with talker adaptation, especially in individuals with lower reading ability. Examining the interaction between voice and phonetic processing will (1) contribute to a theoretical understanding of talker adaptation in speech perception and (2) pave the way for identifying evidence-based practices that may play a role in remediating dyslexia. It is established that individuals with lower reading ability, such as individuals with dyslexia, show impairment in voice identification (Perrachione, Del Tufo & Gabrielli, 2011). It is also known that poor readers, while showing a typical sensitivity to transitional probabilities inherent in language structure, demonstrate deficits in procedural learning (Gabay, Thiessen & Holt, 2015). It remains unknown if impaired voice identification in individuals with poorer reading ability reflects poor associative learning, or merely points towards a reduced sensitivity to the statistical probabilities in the speech signal as prior findings suggest (Perrachione, Del Tufo & Gabrielli, 2011). If poor readers do indeed have augmented difficulty identifying voices compared to typical readers, a subsequent benefit to talker adaptation is also present.

Wesley Leong, Psychological Sciences

Current Research: I am continuing to analyze the Alice EEG datasets to better explain our results, and to rule out potential confounds. The next step is to see if these effects generalize to other linguistic stimuli. To do this, I will use existing EEG data collected by two students in the L&C division – Yanina Prystauka and Zac Ekves – that was recorded while participants read multiple two- sentence pairs. Each pair involved some agent interacting with an object, and so we can build a similarity profile of the agent across both sentences and see if the effect persists after averaging across trials. I will also analyze other publicly-available EEG data, such as the upcoming Le Petit Prince corpus (Stehwien et al 2020), which will feature data from 26 different languages. In the spirit of my previous research, this upcoming work will involve some combination of engineering, neuroscience, psychology, and linguistics.

Prianka Murthy, Psychological Sciences

Current Research:

Aliyar Ozercan, Philosophy

Current Research:

Kristin Simmers, Educational Psychology

Current Research: I plan to study how and to what extent knowledge of the interdisciplinary field of Mind, Brain & Education (MBE) research impacts novice and/or pre-service teachers beliefs, attitudes and practices in the classroom. My hope is that these foundational studies can inform future studies exploring effective MBE teacher education programs as well as the impact these may have on teacher efficacy and student outcomes. The first stage of this proposed work would be to create a measure of MBE knowledge and application, which could be administered to UCONN students in the Neag Teacher Education program and/or to early career educators who are recent graduates from UCONN. This measure would also gauge existing beliefs, attitudes and practices and determine correlation between variables. Once we have established a baseline in all measures, we can use the data to design targeted MBE research integration into existing teacher education or professional development to directly address demonstrated areas of need. This could initially take the form of creating modules and may eventually lead to a graduate certificate program, and would involve the collaboration of faculty across neuroscience, psychology and education departments.

Gray Freeman Thomas, Psychological Sciences

Current Research: Current research plans include collecting survey data about perspectives on contentious topics. The purpose of this research is twofold: (1) it will provide us with rich survey data about the perspectives that University of Connecticut students have on contentious topics, and (2) it will serve as a pre-screening opportunity for future studies conducted in the lab.

This is motivated by recent research on polarization and discussion that serves to persuade others of a particular viewpoint. America has seen an increase in ideological polarization over recent years (i.e., Pew Research Center, 2014), which naturally motivates researchers to investigate how these ideals are communicated with others. It is also important to examine how one communicates and persuades others about these ideas both within and across group ideologies.

This survey will serve as a gauge of general opinion of students at the university on controversial topics, and it will also serve as the foundation for future work inviting participants to come into the lab and discuss these contentious topics with others. This survey may also run for an extended period of time, which will allow rich patterns in the longevity of the data collected.

Emma Wing, Psychological Sciences

Current Research:

I am currently working on a project which asks whether humans’ representations of characters in a story become more integrated when these characters interact. Recent computational modeling shows that an RNN analyzes two characters who interacted in a story as more similar to each other than e.g., two characters who did not interact. We will determine if this is the case in humans by manipulating which character interacts with a key object that recurs throughout a complex, 5-clause story – e.g., 'The aunt told her nephew she/he had punctured the ball. Suddenly, a dog nudged the ball and rolled it under the couch. The ball deflated’. Using the Visual World Paradigm, we will monitor eye movements to appropriate scenes while participants listen to these stories. We predict that at the final “ball” in the example, there will be more looks back to whichever protagonist (referenced with the “she” or the “he” in the first sentence) interacted with the ball. We will also correlate the probability of fixating the protagonist, throughout the sequence, with the equivalent similarity profile generated by the RNNs (described recently in Davis & Altmann, Cognition, 2021).

Like my work earlier this year, and the work proposed, this project explores how object reference is processed during real-time language comprehension. It will provide evidence of specific conceptual representational components of events and will add to our knowledge of human sentence processing.