Research Career Programs

The goal of this project is to study the cellular basis of active sensation. A crucial function of all nervous systems is to distinguish between sensory stimuli originating from the external world and that generated by our own movements. This task relies on brain circuits that integrate sensory information with an internal model, or expectation, of self-generated movements. The complexity and intractability of many models used to study active sensing means that translating insights from these studies to failures of normal nervous system function remains challenging.

Anxiety disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) typically nucleate when individuals experience a highly traumatic event. One hallmark of PTSD is pronounced expression of fear and resistance to fear-suppressing behavioral therapies. The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is important for mediating both the expression and inhibition of learned fear. Specifically, the human dorsal anterior cingulate and ventromedial (vmPFC) subdivisions of mPFC are generally believed to be responsible for mediating the expression and inhibition of fear, respectively.

Habituation is a simple form of learning in which animals reduce responsiveness to repetitive stimuli. Habituation forms a foundation for normal cognition; without the ability to filter irrelevant stimuli, animals are unable to perform more complex cognitive tasks. Indeed, habituation learning is impaired in a wide range of heritable human disorders that present with more complex cognitive symptoms, including Schizophrenia, Autism Spectrum Disorders and Huntington’s Disease.

PROJECT SUMMARY Adult behavior is the product of neural circuits that have been sculpted during development by genetic programs and experience in the form of neural activity. Developing nervous systems frequently display characteristic spontaneous activity that is essential for circuit refinement. However, the precise mechanisms by which spontaneous neural activity sculpts the refinement and maturation of non-sensorimotor circuits to shape behavior remain poorly understood.

Project Abstract. Candidate and career goals: I am an engineer by training, with a strong background in neural engineering and the development of motor brain-machine interfaces (BMIs). My career goal is to establish an independent nonhuman primate (NHP) laboratory with two primary aims. First, I will advance our fundamental understanding of the motor system via the combination of electrophysiology with novel statistical and computational methods.

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Memory is core to human cognition, undergoes protracted developmental maturation and age-related decline, and is disrupted in numerous neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. Despite the central role of memory in health and disease, remarkably little is known about the neural mechanisms supporting memory in humans.

Project Summary Reward is often present in risky environments, requiring individuals to weigh the benefits of rewards against the associated risks. There are several psychiatric disorders in which patients are unable to choose an appropriate response during risky reward opportunities. Some patients with addiction disorders are driven to seek reward at the expense of high costs and quality of life detriment, whereas some patients with major depression disorder are often too sensitive to punishment and miss out on reward opportunities.

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The hippocampus is critical for capturing rich, multimodal representations of experience and facilitating the long-term storage and later recall of these experiences. During sleep and pauses in behavior, the hippocampus can “replay” prior experience – reactivating the neural ensemble corresponding to the original experience in a time-compressed manner.

Project Summary / Abstract The long-term goal of my research is to gain a holistic understanding of how movement commands are generated- including their relationship to sensory feedback and movement context- in order to restore movement to those who have lost it. When the ability to move is lost, due to spinal cord injury or disease, the ability to generate movement commands is still intact, but the command cannot reach the end effectors.

Project Summary/Abstract This proposal is being submitted to support the transition of Dr. Dominguez-Lopez from mentored trainee to an independent investigator in the neurobiology of drug addiction, specifically studying the dopamine microcircuits controlling drug-seeking behavior. Dr. Dominguez-Lopez works under the mentorship of Dr. Michael Beckstead at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (OMRF) investigating the role of dopamine neurotransmission in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) in methamphetamine (METH) self- administration behavior. Dr.