Behavioral Neuroscience Program
The Behavioral Neuroscience research area is undergoing substantial renovation, creating four new wet and dry laboratories, a state-of-the-art surgical suite and an integrated stereology/microscopy room. This work is nearly completed (as of October/ November of 2010). These new facilities will enable extensive opportunities to work on new projects and form additional collaborations. The Behavioral Neuroscience division of the Psychology Department at ASU consists of seven full-time (tenured, tenure-track, joint, adjunct) faculty and we are pleased with our successful recruitment of Dr. Foster Olive, who joined us this summer 2010. Our group has diverse research interests in subject areas including learning and memory, mathematical modeling of behavior, aging and neurodegenerative diseases, behavioral and neurobiological consequences of drug abuse and stress, feeding behavior, and recovery of function after brain damage. A variety of methods are utilized within each laboratory to investigate such phenomena, including molecular, genetic, neuroanatomical, pharmacological, neuroimaging, and, of course, behavioral techniques. Students interested in joining our program are encouraged to learn more about the faculty research and to contact the faculty directly with any questions or comments. If the faculty's interests appeal to your own, be sure to follow the links on this page to learn more about the program
Some faculty within the Department of Psychology participate in the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Graduate Program. Please visit their site to learn more about the program.
Research Labs
Heather Bimonte Nelson, Associate Professor and Behavioral Neuroscience Division Head. The objective of our laboratory is to determine relationships between hormonal, cognitive and neurobiological alterations during aging using animal models.
Conditioned Feeding Laboratories
Elizabeth D. Capaldi, Professor. Dr. Capaldi's research aims to understand the learning processes that produce conditioned food preferences. The research concerns how flavors come to be preferred by being associated with already preferred flavors or with nutrients.
Behavioral Neuroscience Research in Stress
Cheryl D. Conrad, Professor. The studies performed in our lab investigate morphological and functional changes in the hippocampus following chronic stress. Our studies investigate the mechanism(s) that underlie changes in hippocampal dendritic morphology following chronic stress to facilitate treatment strategies for cognitive improvement.
Ronald Hammer, Professor, (joint appointment with BN) My laboratory studies plasticity and neural adaptation in mesocorticolimbic systems. We have focused on the nucleus accumbens (NAc) due to its involvement in addiction and certain symptoms of schizophrenia.
Foster Olive, Assistant Professor. Drug Abuse Research.
Basic Behavioral Processes Lab
Federico Sanabria, Assistant Professor. We study basic processes that are critical to understand human and non-human behavior.
Steve Helms Tillery, Assistant Professor (Affiliate appointment with BN). The overall aim of the research carried out in the SMoRG lab is to both understand the intricacies of neural control of real arm movement, and to address crucial bioengineering issues in the design of neuro-electronic hybrid systems.