Ann M. Graybiel
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Introduced by Patricia Manz, assistant professor of school psychology, Department of Education and Human Services Interviewed by Colin Saldanha, assistant professor of biological sciences, Department of Biological Sciences |
The Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Web Site: http://web.mit.edu/bcs/people/graybiel.shtml
Title of Presentation: How the Brain Builds Habits
Ann M. Graybiel is the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Graybiel is a National Medal of Science winner; Killian Award winner (the highest honor given to an MIT professor); member of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Institute of Medicine; and a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology. She was trained at Harvard and MIT, received her PhD from MIT in 1971, and has been on the faculty of MIT since then. On the basis of her work, Graybiel was elected to the National Academy of Sciences of the USA in 1988, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1991, and the Institute of Medicine of the USA in 1994. She was awarded the National Medal of Science of the USA in 2002. Research in the Graybiel Laboratory is focused on regions of the forebrain that influence movement, mood and motivation: the basal ganglia and neural pathways interconnecting the basal ganglia with the cerebral cortex.
Graybiel and her group use methods ranging from multi-electrode recordings in awake behaving animals to genetic engineering to analyze these neural pathways. Central to many of these studies is work on brain mechanisms underlying habit formation and repetitive behaviors and understanding how such mechanisms can become dysfunctional in neurologic and neuropsychiatric disorders such as Parkinson's disease and obsessive-compulsive disorders, and in addictive states.
Introduced by Patricia H. Manz
Patricia H. Manz received her Ph.D. in Professional Psychology, with a combined concentration in School, Community and Clinical Psychology, from the Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the School Psychology Program at Lehigh University. Dr. Manz has presented and published nationally in the areas of family-school partnerships in urban communities, family involvement in children's education, early intervention and prevention of difficulties in young children's literacy and socioemotional development, and cross-cultural assessment methods. Her specific research to date involves the examination of cultural differences in educational involvement behaviors among families and young children of varying ethnic and linguistic backgrounds and the development and evaluation of family-based interventions for fostering early language and literacy development in very young children. Dr. Manz received the National Head Start Research Scholars Award for her dissertation, and was subsequently awarded the Mary Switzer Merit Research Fellowship by the U. S. Department of Education, National Institute of Disability Rehabilitation Research. She has recently been recognized as an Early Career Scholar by the Society for the Study of School Psychology. Dr. Manz is a member of the editorial board for School Psychology Review.
Interviewed by Colin J. Saldanha
Colin J. Saldanha and members of his laboratory are curious as to how hormones participate in brain repair. He studies how steroids re-organize the brain under natural and pathological conditions. Using species of songbirds that dramatically alter the architecture of their brains throughout life, he tries to understand how estrogens are provided to specific targets, and how they interact with their receptors, and in combination with trophic factors mold brain structure and function.
His scholarship is supported by National Institutes of Health (NINDS), the Alzheimer's Association and the Pennsylvania Dept. of Health.
He holds a PhD. in Biopsychology from Columbia University and trained at the Brain Research Institute, UCLA School of Medicine prior to joining the Dept. of Biological Sciences at Lehigh in 2001. He teaches courses in integrative and comparative biology, comparative physiology, developmental neurobiology, and specialty courses such as "Hormonal Correlates of Neuroplasticity," "Adult Neurogenesis: Structure and Function" and, "Casual Sex: Sexual Determinism and Differentiation." He also trains undergraduates, graduate students and postdoctoral trainees in the Scientific Method through supervised individual projects in the laboratory.
At Lehigh, he has been the recipient of several awards, including the Christian R. & Mary F. Lindback Foundation Junior Faculty Award (2002), the Eleanor & Joseph F. Libsch Early Career Research Award (2005), and most recently, the Donald B. & Dorothy L. Stabler Award for Excellence in Teaching (2006).
