Jessica Thomas successfully defended her thesis on April 6th, 2018!Title: "Elucidating the molecular and biophysical determinants that suppressCa2+-dependent facilitation of Cav2.2 channels”CONGRATULATIONS!Pictured: Jessica (left) and her mentor Amy Lee, PhD (right)

Rachel (Clark) Cole successfully defended her thesis on March 29th, 2018!Title:“Beneficial contribution of health behaviors to learning and related brain mechanisms in older adults”CONGRATULATIONS!Pictured: Rachel Cole (left) and her Mentor, Michelle Voss, PhD (right)

Catherine Yeates successfully defended her thesis recently!Title: “The reversibility and limits of homeostatic synaptic plasticity”CONGRATULATIONS!Pictured: Catherine (left) and her mentor C. Andrew Frank, PhD (right)

Katherine (Katy) Proch successfully defended her thesis on March 28th, 2018!Title: “Characterizing the effect of serotonergic input on medullary Phox2b neurons”CONGRATULATIONS!Pictured: Katherine Proch (left) and her Mentor: George Richerson, MD, PhD (right)

This year at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference in Austin, TX, the University of Iowa was represented by both the Iowa Neuroscience Institute (INI), and by the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Neuroscience. Dr. Ted Abel, Director of the INI and AAAS Fellow, spoke on Saturday, Feb. 17th on his research regarding sleep and memory consolidation. Dr. Abel’s...

University of Iowa graduate students Eric Emmons and Benton Purnell won first- and second-place, respectively, in the 2017 Pappajohn Biomedical Institute Graduate Student Best Paper Competition.All graduate students working in PBI labs were eligible to enter papers published during 2017. Finalists were invited to present their work to members of PBI labs on Monday, March 5. Postdoctoral associates...

Scientists long believed that carbon dioxide inhaled during sleep activates neurons responsible for breathing and causes a person to wake up.However, a recent University of Iowa study identifies a group of neurons responsible for arousal that are directly triggered by carbon dioxide and cause mice to wake up without any changes to breathing, according to a press release from the Carver College of...

The Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences is pleased to announce that Dr. Jan Wessel, an assistant professor in the Departments of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Neurology, has been awarded an R01 from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) entitled "The Role of a Neural Mechanism for Inhibitory Control in Cognitive Flexibility." The collaborators on this...

Finding underscores that animals beyond humans and primates show abstract intelligence. Pigeons aren’t so bird-brained after all.New research at the University of Iowa shows that pigeons can discriminate the abstract concepts of space and time—and seem to use a different region of the brain than humans and primates to do so. In experiments, pigeons were shown on a computer screen a static...

The honor will be presented at the February 2018 AAAS meetingUniversity of Iowa faculty member Daniel Tranel has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science. Election as a AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.This year 396 members have been...