During the summer of 2019, Lowell Smith, a senior in Psychological Sciences, presented work on cognitive changes and sex differences in stress hormone release in aged rats at the Society for Behavioral Neuroscience national conference at Indiana University.
In a paper published late last year, Dr. Grissom, along with colleagues from the Brain Institute at Tulane University, demonstrated that estrogen receptors remain active in the brains of mice even when the ovaries have been removed (OVX), and that neuroestrogens contribute to this activity for a limited time.
Dr. Armin Kargol has published a two-part book series on Introduction to Cellular Biophysics (Parts I and II). It is intended as a textbook for an undergraduate course in Cellular Biophysics.
Part I: Membrane Transport Mechanisms is an inventory of physical transport processes occurring in cells. Part II: From membrane transport to neural signaling is a closer look at how complex biological and physiological cell phenomena result from these very basic physical processes. This two-volume book has been published by Morgan and Claypool in cooperation with IOP as a part of a "Concise Physics" series. It is available in print and ebook formats: Part One, Part Two
A collaborative effort between Dr. Kate Yurgil and her colleagues at Tulane, this review article critically examines research on the effects of music training on brain waves and working memory across the lifespan. The article was published in Frontiers in Psychology: Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience on February 21, 2020 and can be viewed at:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00266/full.
Congratulations to Loyola University New Orleans Environmental Science and Biology students in Dr. Aimée Thomas’ research lab for successfully presenting their research at the 2019 National Association of Biology Teachers Professional Development conference in Chicago. They competed in the Undergraduate Mentored Research poster competition.
Katie Rompf, ENVB '20, placed 3rd in the competition for her research and was awarded a cash prize and a one-year membership in the organization. Her research focuses on the Brown Widow, Latrodectus geometricus, an invasive, venomous species of spiders whose population increases in urban and suburban habitats, including New Orleans. The Brown Widow secretes a neurotoxic venom that immobilizes prey by attacking the nervous system.
Group photo left to right: Mariana Kendall, ENVB '20, Chloe Dupleix, BIOL '20, Aimee Thomas, Sofia Giordano, ENVB '20, and Katie Rompf, ENVB '20.
With ever-changing environments, how does the human brain make predictions of incoming sensory information? This project used electroencephalography (EEG) to examine electrical brain activity associated with pattern prediction of visual stimuli. Robert and his faculty mentor Dr. Kate Yurgil presented a poster of their findings at the March 2019 meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society in San Francisco, CA.
This research earned Robert the 2019 Outstanding Student Research Award from the Department of Psychological Sciences.
Congratulations, Robert!