Ethan Beri, Psychological Sciences

Title of Proposed Research: Evaluating Dyadic Interactions as Predictors of Observational Learning Success in Rats

Arinjoy Bhattacharjee, Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences

Title of Proposed Research: Effort Allocation and Feedback Processing in Preschool Children with DLD: Evidence from Pupillometry

Marcus Harris, Educational Psychology

Title of Proposed Research: AI Assisted Tools for Reproducible Cognitive Neuroscience Research

Maria Jaakson, Nursing

Title of Proposed Research:Developing new treatments for Opioid-induced hyperalgesia (OIH)

Siqi Liang, Psychological Sciences

Title of Proposed Research: Understanding the Effects of Early Environmental Factors on the Development of EEG Alpha Rhythms in Infancy

Sorour Sarihi, Nutritional Sciences

Title of Proposed Research: Food Matrix–Driven Fucoxanthin Modulation of the Microbiome–Gut–Brain Axis and Cognitive Resilience

Zeinab Tajik Mansouri, Biomedical Engineering

Title of Proposed Research: Computational Methods for Calcium Imaging and Neural Decoding

Caitlin Senni, Psychological Sciences

Title of Proposed Research: Expanding our understanding of vocabulary acquisition from word-referent mapping to broader word knowledge

Pravaal Yadav, Linguistics

Title of Proposed Research: Investigating ambiguity in complex biclausal questions in children using EEG imaging

Giulio Ciferri Muramatsu, Linguistics

Title of Proposed Research: How universal is disjunction in natural languages: A developmental study

Mina Golmohammadi, Psychological Sciences

Title of Proposed Research: Missing pulse

Noah Raffone, Psychological Sciences

Title of Proposed Research: Visual response properties of excitatory and inhibitory cells in rabbit visual cortex during different brain states

Eneida Wainman, Physiology & Neurobiology

Title of Proposed Research: Neuroanatomical mapping of the tachykinin-3 receptor (Tacr3)-expressing neurons in the mouse brain using a novel knock-in line

Gayle Edelstein, Psychological Sciences

Current Research:  My current research focuses on drug development studies using animal models of effort-based choice. This includes assessing the effects of the dopamine (DA) D3 partial agonist, aripiprazole, on effort-based choice
tasks in male and female rats and in mice. DA D3 partial agonists have become a central focus in studies targeting multiple psychiatric disorders, and aripiprazole is being tested for its ability to reverse the effort- related effects of tetrabenazine (TBZ) and increase selection of high effort actions. I also have been testing drugs that have actions on various monoamine transporters (serotonin transporter, SERT; norepinephrine transporter, NET; DA transporter, DAT), and assessing their abilities to reverse the effort-related effects of TBZ. My results show that drugs with the highest affinity for DAT and NET are the most effective in reversing the effort-related motivational effects of TBZ. Compounds with the highest affinity for SERT ineffective, consistent with clinical studies illustrating the limitations of SERT inhibitors for the treatment of depression. In parallel, I am conducting neurochemical studies with microdialysis to compare the extracellular levels of
the monoamines after injections of these drugs. This line of research crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries, blending methods and scholarly activity from multiple fields (i.e., psychiatry, behavioral/cognitive sciences, neurochemistry), with the ultimate goal of developing novel treatments.

Meara Geraty, Psychological Sciences

Current Research:  I will investigate the physiological and psychological effects of collective political events and how attending such events impacts group cohesion, support for violence, sense of meaning and belonging, and political attitudes. The project will have important implications for issues of political polarization and politically-motivated violence by helping us understand the role of high-arousal collective events in fomenting support for violence or violent behavior, such as that that occurred on January 6, 2021. It will also explore what draws individuals to these collective events in the first place, specifically by investigating whether attendance facilitates a sense of belonging or meaning. The research will combine classical anthropological theory, political science, psychology, and cognitive science. We will gather physiological measures and survey data in a naturalistic field setting, bringing psychological methods to bear on anthropological theories, and doing so in a context which has never been examined in this way: political events. My coursework at UConn in anthropological and sociological theory, non-linear dynamical processes, cognitive science, and statistics has and will continue to prepare me for this project by giving me the theoretical and methodologies tools necessary for such interdisciplinary research.

Michael Lehane, Pharmacy

Current Research: Although we have shown that (2R,6R)-Hydroxynorketamine attenuates withdrawal-like behaviors, the brain regions and cell types that mediate the therapeutic response of HNK during opioid withdrawal remain unknown. Further, it is unclear if HNK produces a unique effect on neural activity compared to ketamine during opioid withdrawal. To address this knowledge gap, I am measuring brain c-Fos expression (a marker of neural plasticity) in oxycodone-dependent mice treated with saline, HNK, or ketamine prior to precipitated withdrawal. I hypothesize that brain regions in the extended amygdala (central amygdala (CeA) and bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST)) will be significantly affected by HNK and ketamine. In my preliminary data, I have found that HNK and ketamine decreased c-Fos expression in the oval nucleus of the BNST and periaqueductal gray, while no changes were observed in the central amygdala. In ongoing experiments, I am analyzing c-Fos expression in other brain regions and subregions associated with OUD and withdrawal.

Antonio Reck, Psychological Sciences

Current Research:  I am analyzing data from follow-up studies to my master’s thesis project, which I will submit for publication within the next month. The thesis focuses on the anti-pruritic, or itch-reducing, properties of cannabinoids and the underlying mechanisms. I have taken a behavioral pharmacology-based approach to systematically determine compounds effective at reducing experimentally-induced scratching, without psychotropic cannabimimetic side effects. I am also using my prior knowledge of programming, with the assistance of our collaborator Dr. David Siderovski, to develop an automated tracking system for mouse scratching. My dissertation research will build on my recent discovery that regulators of signaling proteins (RGS) mediate the development of surgically-induced neuropathic pain. Using an in-house bred mouseline of RGS12 constitutive deficiency, I aim to characterize differences in nociception and neuropathic pain
development following nerve injury compared to wildtype mice. Additionally, KOR agonists will be used to determine if RGS12 loss has altered KOR sensitivity. I will use my background in animal behavior, coupled with the training I’ve received at UConn in pharmacology, molecular biology, and data analysis, to further characterize the underlying mechanisms of these pain conditions. Support from IBACS will give me the opportunity to receive training in cell culture,
Western blotting, and other biochemical techniques that will aid in my dissertation research.

Naomi Sellers, Psychological Sciences

Current Research:  My current work is a continuation of the study I presented at Psychonomics. I am digging into how the effect of sentence predictability differs across individuals as there are wide variations in the behavioral (probe word response) data and pupil dilation data that seem to be related in interesting ways. We also have explicit prediction data from these participants that I want to use to characterize participants as high or low context users based off the types of predictions they make, how semantically similar they are to the actual word, and how similar they are to the average responses. If there is a distinction between high and low context users, I would want to see if high context users also demonstrate larger sentence predictability effects on probe word accuracy and on pupil dilations compared to low context users. This work connects work in the speech sciences and psycholinguistic domains most. This work additionally connects to the clinical domain where researchers have been examining of the effects noise has on speech processing, particularly for older adults and people with hearing loss. Moreover, I want to look at the effects of sentence predictability in individuals with aphasia by collaborating with those in the SLHS department, extending its interdisciplinary nature.

Afshin Seyednejad, Pharmacy

Current Research:  Cocaine use causes persistent neuroadaptive changes that are mediated, in part, by epigenetic factors. While much research has focused on the roles of post-translational modifications in substance use disorder (SUD) models, RNA modifications have received little attention. Over 170 RNA post-transcriptional modifications (rPTMs) exist, impacting stability, localization, and abundance of RNA. Antibody-based methods have been used to link rPTMs to SUD, but these methods are indirect and prone to nonspecific
binding. Mass spectrometry (MS), while direct and comprehensive, has not been applied in SUD models. Recently, Dr. Fabris developed a novel MS-based approach for mapping rPTMs. Our newly generated data shows that multiple rPTMs are altered in a sex-dependent manner in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) 24 h after repeated but not acute cocaine administration. Expanding on these results, we propose to identify cocaine-induced rPTMs in NAc and dorsal striatum (DS) and at multiple timepoints (2 h, 24 h, and 7 d) following acute and repeated cocaine injections and following intravenous cocaine self-administration. Also, to explore receptor signaling cascades involved in cocaine- induced plasticity, we aim to stimulate dopamine receptor subtypes, AMPA receptors, or TrkB receptors in primary neurons and measure time-dependent rPTMs changes. The data will reveal the rPTMs with the
most significant temporal variations, warranting further mechanistic insight by a full-fledged R01 grant.

Emma Wing, Psychological Sciences

Current Research:  Typicality is a dominating factor in psycholinguistic research which, based on my prior offline experiments, appears to be influenced by phrase type (VP/TP/CP). My current project uses an online measure, eye tracking in the Visual World Paradigm, to examine the effect of linguistic structure on typical object concepts during processing. Linguists more often test offline effects, whereas psycholinguists test online effects. Thus, examining the relation between offline and online effects of phrase type on typicality effects will support bridging the divide between the fields. Typicality effects have a strong influence on conceptual representations activated during processing. For example, when reading the word CHAIR, the default concept activated is a typical chair: intact, perhaps wooden with a high back. My findings suggest phrase type (VP/TP/CP) determines the extent to which typical object features are activated during processing: morphemes in VP have a wider range of effects on typical object features than TP, from defaulting to only typical object features to exclusively activating atypical object features. This project aims to test at which point in the sentence particular morphemes reduce typicality effects and to what extent. I will track participants’ eye movements while they view images of objects in more and less typical states and hear sentences manipulating VP, TP, and CP morphemes. This work will map out interactions that are crucial for my proposed research.

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.

William Armstrong, Physiology & Neurobiology

Current Research: My research will characterize the role of C1QL3 in HCRT/OX projections to NA neurons in the LC, which are critical to sleep- wake regulation. To approach this question, I will use several techniques including IHC, stereotaxic viral injections, mouse genetics and electrophysiology. First, I will perform IHC and fluorescent in situ hybridization to confirm C1ql3 localization in HCRT/OX neurons. I will then inject AAV-Cre-tdT (tdTomato) into the LHA of a C1ql3-mVenusflox/flox mouse to knock out C1ql3. This will allow me to observe differences in HCRT/OX projections to the LC between control and knockout mice. I hypothesize that C1ql3 knockout will result in decreased HCRT/OX synapse density onto NA neurons in the LC, which I will visualize with IHC and quantify. I also expect decreased synaptic function, which I will assess through slice electrophysiology measuring miniature, spontaneous, and evoked EPSCs. Finally, I will inject AAV-Cre+C1ql3-tdT which I hypothesize will rescue C1QL3 expression and restore HCRT/OX fiber density and transmission to the LC.

This interdisciplinary approach will be the first to identify the function of C1QL3 in HCRT/OX neurons and provides a powerful link between molecular neuroscience and broader behavioral phenomena such as sleep and its disorders. My work could also identify a novel genetic marker or therapeutic avenue for narcolepsy if C1QL3 knockout inhibits HCRT/OX function, paving the way for behavioral assays studying sleep in knockout mice.

Megan Chiovaro, Psychological Sciences

Current Research:

At UConn, I am currently engaged in a variety of projects focused on how individuals work together without leaders. Continuing our work on the Arab Spring, my co-authors and I are investigating the differences between publicly available event datasets. Each dataset has a different way of collecting event data, and these different collection methods can produce drastically different results. We are investigating how these differences impact the results of political science research.

My collaborators and I are also writing a paper for a special issue of Behavior Research Methods comparing various time series analyses, including recurrence quantification analysis, vector auto-regression, and cross-correlation. Each method has strengths and disadvantages, but they are rarely used together. Through this project, we hope to introduce researchers to a variety of time series methods and help outline which may be best for their particular situation.

I am also working on a paper using nonlinear analyses for video and audio time series data. Using data-intensive audio and video analysis techniques, we are analyzing how groups of researchers develop ideas for joint research projects aimed at solving difficult societal health problems. This work is also being formulated as a tutorial with accompanying open source code, so that researchers can use our materials to learn these nonlinear methods.

Kelsey Davinson, Psychological Sciences

Current Research:

My current research on infant neural oscillatory development involves two areas of inquiry: resting-state EEG and EEG mu rhythm’s functional properties. Resting-state EEG (RS-EEG) measures brain rhythms while an individual is awake and not engaged in a task or active cognitive/affective processing. What is not yet understood in infancy is how different RS-EEG contexts affect EEG measures, which is informative when determining the appropriate context for RS-EEG acquisition. Further, an examination of co-occurring EEG rhythms in infancy is rare, but essential to more holistic perspectives of brain development. My secondary data analyses examine RS theta/beta ratio as a measure of the dynamic relationship between multiple neural oscillations in different contexts and across infancy. The focus of my other research plans is on the emergence of EEG mu rhythm’s functional properties. It is reactive during action observation and execution, and these “neural mirroring” properties are potentially informative of social information processing. I will be coding, processing, and EEG recordings from 6- to 9-week-old infants during the performance and perception of mouth gestures. My work will identify the mu rhythm frequency range and if there are neural mirroring properties observed at this early age, both have yet to be explored and will inform our understanding of social cognitive processing. My research incorporates cognitive neuroscience and biopsychosocial approaches to development.

Katelyn DeNegre, Molecular & Cell Biology

Current Research: The goal of my study is to understand the function of Xlr genes in brain development, and to confirm the observation of a transgenerational neurobehavioral defect in our knockdown model. Beginning with a male mouse homozygous for the Xlr3 transgene (P), we will investigate the integrity of brain-specific imprinting, brain transcriptomic profiles and neurobehavioral defects in subsequent generations. Imprinted expression of Xlr3b,4b and 4c will be assessed in F1 female who have inherited the compromised X chromosome from the P males. This female then passes the epimutated X to her offspring (F2). F2 male offspring are of interest because they have exhibited behavioral defects in previous experiments. Total RNA will be extracted from brains from neonatal F2 males and subjected to global transcriptome profiling via RNAseq. Additionally, F2 males grown to adulthood will undergo behavior testing in the MBNF. P generation knockdown males are currently in outcross matings to produce the F1 generation. The outcross allows tracing of X chromosome parental origin in F1 females for imprinting assays. The F2 generation will consist of males who possess the lineage traced X chromosome and are either homozygous for the transgene or are wild-type controls. RNA Seq will allow me to explore whether depletion of Xlr3 mRNA affects transcription of other genes in this tissue, thereby confirming Xlr3 as a mediator of transgenerational effects on neurodevelopment.

Caitrin Hall, Psychological Sciences

Current Research: Underlying my research interests is my desire to support marginalized communities and help eradicate oppressive structures. This has motivated me to advance beyond my psychology coursework to learn about critical race theory, systemic racism, and the resulting detrimental outcomes. My recent experience taking White Racism with sociologist Dr. Noel Cazenave emphasized racism as a system of oppression that requires change at the structural, rather than solely the individual, level. While psychology research will be necessary in restructuring social systems, we must study individuals within the context of the whole. In my future work, I aim to bridge the gap between the individual-level focus of psychology and the societal-level focus of sociology in order to progress toward social justice.

Specifically, I will explore the relationship between individual and collective behavior. Research has found that group synchrony cultivates social connectedness, contributes to interpersonal liking, and increases pain tolerance. Previous findings also demonstrate a link between social connectivity and reduced anxiety levels. Together, these results suggest that synchronizing with others may improve wellbeing. By investigating how environmental and social contexts modulate behavior/health outcomes, we may augment our understanding of perception, action, and cognition while advocating for structural changes and interventions that may increase wellness and success in oppressed populations.

Nathan Lautz, Psychological Sciences

Current Research: I’m currently investigating the functional involvement of visual simulation during language comprehension. After hearing the sentence "The hiker saw an eagle in the sky," people are faster to verify that an image of an eagle with outspread wings depicts something in the sentence than an image of an eagle with closed wings. This "shape match effect" could indicate that sentence comprehension involves perceptual simulation (here, simulating the visual form of the eagle). Ostarek et al. (2019) recently challenged this interpretation, using visual interference targeting different levels of visual processing (from low-level up to images of everyday objects with semantic content) to test if this interference disrupted the match effect. They found that only the stimuli with semantic content eliminated the effect, arguing that perceptual simulation does not underlie the match effect. Alternately, we hypothesized a linear trend in the disruption of the effect as visual interference targets successively higher levels of visual processing, indicating increased functional involvement of the visual system in perceptual simulation in successively higher processing areas. Preliminary modeling has revealed this trend. Next we will examine existing fMRI data to ascertain whether the interference stimuli are indeed processed by regions of increasing computational distance from the periphery. This will help elucidate the neurocognitive basis of perceptual simulation during language processing.

Ruth McLeod, Psychological Sciences

Current Research:In the summer of 2021, my plan is to go back into original medical records to collect additional data about our subjects, including quantification of any underlying conditions that may have further affected their developmental outcomes. This will include the infant’s length of stay in the NICU (an indirect measure of health complications), whether the infant experienced necrotizing enterocolitis (a common form of neonatal GI inflammation), as well as any other complications that may have caused trauma or inflammation during birth. We will use this additional data to get a more detailed and refined picture of how inflammatory conditions and general health modulate the neuroprotective effectiveness of adenosine antagonist treatment. We will also be working to collect data from infants who received no treatment with an adenosine antagonist, and comparing their developmental outcomes to those of matched GA who were treated, either early (< 48 hours post-birth) or late (>48 hours post-birth). This will help us to understand the extent of adenosine antagonist protection, and offer new insights to possible mechanisms of action of adenosine antagonists in the context of inflammatory profiles. Specifically, it remains unclear exactly how adenosine antagonists enhance outcomes in preterms. Putative pathways include a reduction in molecular events following ATP failure that could reduce neuronal death, an attenuation of microglial activation that could preserve neuronal integrity.

Hannah Mechtenberg, Psychological Sciences

Current Research: I have several ongoing projects that span neuroscience and psychology. One current focus is on prepositional, or four-term, analogies that take the structure A:B::C:D. Of particular interest over the next six months is to clarify how psycholinguistic properties—including word frequency, word length, concreteness, and age of acquisition—may affect the perceived difficulty of a given analogy. I am currently running an online behavioral study that will provide evidence for which psycholinguistic properties may matter, and at which position within the prepositional analogy. These results will help guide construction of a new stimuli set that will limit confounds and enable us to examine how semantics influences analogical reasoning. I am also working with a team of researchers at UConn on a project that is using fMRI to characterize the neural networks that support passive listening of continuous speech. Not only are we considering how the phonetic information is represented and disambiguated neurally, but the acoustic, lexical, syntactic, and semantic information as well. A project of this scope transcends typical studies of speech perception that tend to target only one level in the processing hierarchy. Over the next six months we hope to organize each stream of research into a cohesive article that elegantly describes how each thread interacts to support naturalistic speech perception.