2015 Department News

New Cognitive Neuroscience faculty member Maureen Ritchey has just been named one of the "Rising Stars" in psychology by the Association for Psychological Science. Posted 12/23/15.

Jennifer Drake, BC Psychology Ph.D 2012, is named one of APS 2015 rising stars. Posted 12/23/15.

Kelly Dumais and Alexa Veenema published a paper in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology entitled "Involvement of the oxytocin system in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis in the sex-specific regulation of social recognition." This is the first study exploring the concomitant dynamics between the oxytocin receptor and oxytocin release in a single brain region and revealing higher oxytocin receptor binding and higher oxytocin release during social recognition in male rats compared to female rats. These findings emphasize the importance of studying both sexes in order to better understand the neurobiological basis of normal and impaired forms of social behavior. Posted 12/2/15.

Incoming assistant professor Katherine McAuliffe and colleagues published a paper in Nature today on how a sense of fairness develops in children in seven different cultures. News reports about this paper have appeared in Nature News, The Atlantic, and New Scientist. Posted 11/19/15.

Gene Heyman and Michael McDannald have each been awarded a Faculty Fellowship for the Fall 2016 semester. Congratulations Gene and Michael! Posted 11/16/15.

Kelly Bennion has been awarded a Dissertation Research Award from the American Psychological Association. Posted 11/5/15.

Sindy Cole and Gorica Petrovich published a paper in Scientific Reports entitled "Orexin/Hypocretin-1 Receptor Antagonism Selectively Reduces Cue-Induced Feeding in Sated Rats and Recruits Medial Prefrontal Cortex and Thalamus." Posted 11/5/15.

Donghee Han, Dolichan Kollareth, and James Russell's paper titled "The Words for Disgust in English, Korean, and Malayalam Question its Homogeneity" is accepted for publication in Journal of Language and Social Psychology. Posted 11/5/15.

M.E. Panero and Ellen Winner's paper entitled "Do Actors Possess Traits Associated With High Hypnotizability?" has been accepted for publication in Psychology of Creativity, Aesthetics, and the Arts. This paper is a collaboration with Thalia R. Goldstein (Pace University), Robin Rosenberg (UC, San Francisco), and Hannah Hughes (a 2009-2010 Arts and Mind Lab intern from the University of Bath). Posted 11/4/15.

Sarah Kark and Elizabeth Kensinger's paper entitled "Effect of emotional valence on retrieval-related recapitulation of encoding activity in the ventral visual stream" has been accepted for publication in Neuropsychologia. Posted 10/14/15.

Kelly Dumais and Alexa Veenema published a book chapter in Sex Differences in the Central Nervous System entitled "Presence and Absence of Sex Differences in Structure and Function of the Brain Oxytocin System: Implications for Understanding the Regulation of Social Behavior." This book provides a comprehensive examination of the current state of sex differences research, from both basic science and clinical research perspectives. Dumais and Veenema discuss, among other topics, that the reported sex differences in the brain oxytocin system are not ubiquitous, but appear to be highly species-specific and that actions of the oxytocin system on behavior and neuronal responses are often sex-specific, but do not necessarily correspond with sex differences in oxytocin and the oxytocin receptor in the brain. Posted 10/13/15.

Christina Reppucci and Gorica Petrovich have published a paper in the journal Brain Structure and Function entitled "Organization of connections between the amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex, and lateral hypothalamus: a single and double retrograde tracing study in rats." Posted 8/17/15.

Lauren Anderson and Gorica Petrovich have published a paper in the journal Physiology & Behaviorentitled "Renewal of conditioned responding to food cues in rats: Sex differences and relevance of estradiol." Posted 8/17/15.

Caroline Smith and Alexa Veenema published a paper in the Journal of Neuroendocrinology entitled "Social novelty investigation in the juvenile rat: modulation by the mu-opioid system." They demonstrate that social novelty-seeking in juvenile rats is facilitated by the opioid system in the brain, while dopamine, oxytocin, or vasopressin systems do not seem to be involved in mediating this behavior. This finding is relevant because impaired social novelty-seeking is characteristic for autistic children, which may hamper their development of social skills. The next step will be to localize the effects of the opioid system to specific brain regions and neural circuits. Posted 7/31/15.

Chris Madan is co-author of "Making Memories That Last" in the Journal of Neuroscience. Posted 7/29/15.

Mary Kayyal, Joe Pochedly, and James Russell, with an undergraduate student, recently published a paper on Moral Disgust. Posted 7/29/15.

Kelly Bennion was awarded the 2015 Scott Mesh Honorary Grant for Research in Psychology. Posted 7/21/15.

Sarah Kark was awarded a travel award from the New England chapter of Graduate Women in Science. Posted 7/21/15.

Elizabeth Kensinger was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation, in collaboration with Jessica Payne at Notre Dame, to examine how "Stress at learning interacts with sleep to optimally consolidate emotional memories." Posted 7/21/15.

Gene Heyman has been awarded an Ignite Award for his research on attention allocation. Posted 7/8/15.

Kelly Dumais and Alexa Veenema published a review paper in the journal Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology entitled "Vasopressin and oxytocin receptor systems in the brain: Sex differences and sex-specific regulation of social behavior." Among the most interesting findings is that vasopressin parameters are typically higher in males than in females across species. Fewer sex differences have been reported for oxytocin parameters, but if such sex differences are reported, oxytocin is typically higher in females while oxytocin receptors are typically higher in males. Posted 6/29/15.

Sara Cordes and Nadia Chernyak have been awarded a three-year grant from the Templeton Foundation on the “Cognitive Underpinnings and Consequences of Generosity.” Posted 6/22/15.

Shannon Snapp (Ph.D. 2010 with advisor Karen Rosen) will join the Psychology department at California State Monterey Bay as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the fall of 2015. Shannon will teach undergraduate courses and continue her research on adolescent health and sexuality. Posted 6/4/15.

Alexa Veenema was appointed to serve on the Editorial Board of the journal Hormones and Behavior.Posted 5/22/15.

Barry Schneider has been elected fellow of the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development. Posted 5/18/15.

Kelly Bennion won the Donald J. White Teaching Excellence Award. Posted 5/7/15.

Sara Keefer was selected to present a talk at the 2015 Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior meeting. She was awarded a NITA, New Investigator Travel Award, to present her data at the annual meeting in July in Denver. Posted 4/27/15.

Lauren Anderson was awarded the Florence P. Haseltine award for best poster presentation by a new investigator at the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences annual meeting. Posted 4/27/15.

Jill Waring, who received her Ph.D. in 2011, has accepted a tenure-track position at Saint Louis University. Posted 4/23/15.

Drew Linsley was awarded a $1,500 grant by Sigma Xi to support his dissertation research. Posted 4/23/15.

Kelly Bennion and Elizabeth Kensinger have published a new paper entitled "Selective effects of sleep on emotional memory: What mechanisms are responsible?" in Translational Issues in Psychological Science. Posted 4/22/15.

Laura Niemi was awarded an NSF Postdoctoral Research Award co-sponsored by Dr. Steven Pinker and Dr. Jesse Snedeker at Harvard University. Posted 4/17/15.

Kelly Bennion won an NSF EAPSI (East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute) Fellowship to spend summer 2015 at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore researching the effects of sleep restriction on long-term memory and false memory in adolescents. Posted 4/8/15.

Barry Schneider presented a continuing-education workshop for Montreal clinical psychologists entitled "Adolescent Depression: Treating Moods, Not Just Cognitions." Posted 4/7/15.

Kelly Dumais was awarded a Dissertation Fellowship for the 2015-2016 year by the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Posted 4/6/15.

Michelle Hurst was selected to present a poster at the 2015 NIH Math Cognition Conference and received a $500 travel award. The poster competition selects a maximum of eight posters to be presented at the conference. Posted 4/2/15.

Posters by Jordan Theriault and John Ksander, Drew Linsley, and Chris Madan have won SANS Poster Awards from the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society. Posted 3/30/15.

Kelly Bennion won a Sleep Research Society Abstract Merit Based Award for an abstract that she submitted for presentation at SLEEP 2015, the 29th Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies. Posted 3/25/15.

Larisa Heiphetz, postdoctoral fellow in Liane Young’s Morality Lab, will be joining the Department of Psychology at Columbia University in July 2016. Congratulations Larisa! Posted 3/24/15.

Incoming faculty member Josh Hartshorne's new Psychological Science paper is in the news today. Posted 3/6/15.

Liane Young was awarded a university Research Across Disciplines and Schools (RADS) grant for her proposal “Knowledge is Power: The Impact of Education on Knowledge of and Attitude about Terrorism,” in collaboration with Peter Krause from the Political Science Department. Posted 2/26/15.

Liane Young and Ehri Ryu have both been granted tenure and will be promoted to Associate Professor. Congratulations Liane and Ehri! Posted 2/26/15.

Scott Slotnick was awarded a university Ignite grant for his proposal, “The Role of the Human Hippocampus During Spatial Memory.” Posted 2/25/15.

Kelly Bennion won the American Psychological Association of Graduate Students (APAGS) Teaching Excellence in Psychological Science Award. Posted 2/12/15.

Scott Slotnick is the new Editor-in-Chief of the journal Cognitive Neuroscience (published by Taylor & Francis in the United Kingdom). In this role, Scott has appointed a new Editorial Board, revised the journal’s Aims & Scope, and revamped the journal’s article formats. Posted 1/21/15.

Barry Schneider has a new book, Child Psychopathology: From Infancy to Adolescence (Amazon). Posted 1/15/15.