NEUROSCIENCE WELCOMES THREE NEW MEMBERS

MARK BRAFORD AND CATHY McCORMICK RETIRE AFTER 28 YEARS

W ith the retirement of beloved professors Cathy McCormick and Mark Braford, the neuroscience department welcomes three new assistant professors:

Gunnar Kwakye, Leslie Kwakye, and Siobhan Robinson. Gunnar and Leslie served as visiting assistant professors here

for a year and a half, and we are happy to report that they have joined us as full-time, tenure-track faculty members. !e Kwakyes did postdoctoral work in di"erent labs at Vanderbilt University; Gunnar’s research focuses on the role of environmental toxins on the nervous system, while Leslie focuses on how information from di"erent sensory modalities is integrated together in the brain during perception.

We are also thrilled to report that Siobhan Robinson has joined us as a full-time, assistant professor this year, fresh from a

visiting assistant professorship at Dartmouth College. Her work is aimed at understanding the roles of di"erent parts of the medial temporal lobe in the formation, storage, and retrieval of new, long-term memories.

OBERLIN COLLEGE DEPARTMENT OF NEUROSCIENCE

ABOVE: PYRAMIDAL NEURONS PREPARED IN SIOBHAN ROBINSON’S NEUROANATOMY LAB COURSE, FALL 2013

NeuroNews

From left: Gunnar Kwakye, Leslie Kwakye, and Siobhan Robinson

Mark Braford and Catherine McCormick, both evolutionary

neuroanatomists, came to Oberlin in 1986. Mark’s highly popular courses included Neuroanatomy. His recent research focused on possible homologs in #sh forebrains of structures such as the amygdala and the hippocampus, as well as comparisons of forebrains of coral reef #shes. Cathy taught well-received courses in animal behavior and the evolution of structure and conducted research on the early evolution of the vertebrate auditory system. Both received teaching awards at Oberlin.

Former students continue to drop by to say hello and to thank them for a wonderful educational experience. !e couple now moves on to their new home in Chapel

Hill, North Carolina, near their daughter and her husband, !ey plan to visit Oberlin and conduct research during the next several summers.

Above: Central octavolateralis pathways in the brain of a cartilaginous fish, from McCormick & Braford (1988). Right: Synapses mediating an escape response in goldfish, from Szabo, McCormick and Faber (2007).

JAN THORNTON, chair and professor of neuroscience, has been at Oberlin since 1990. For the last two years she co-taught Introductory Neuroscience and upper level classes in hormones, neuroendocrine research methods, and behavioral neurosci-ence. She and her student collaborators presented research at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (SfN), the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology, and at a regional neuroscience meeting. Jan served as secretary of the Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience and has continued to act as an editor for the Educational Resources in Neuroscience project. She was invited to organize a symposium on her research for the upcoming International Congress on Neuroendocrinology in Sydney.

MIKE LOOSE, professor of neuroscience, has taught at Oberlin since 1990. He again taught courses in his specialty of neurophysiol-ogy and contributed to the teaching of the introductory labs. His research has continued to pursue the neural underpinnings of probabilistic decision making. He and his student collaborators have validated two new mechanisms of analyzing an arti#cial neural network that ranked the relative importance of various prior experiences to a future choice. In the EEG studies in the lab, he and his research students con#rmed and extended a previous result in the lab that found a waveform that predicts—several seconds in advance—whether or not a person will switch their subsequent choice. Additional new work has identi#ed a neural signature that provides a possible explanation for why people so o$en choose a risky alternative for which the rate of reward will be less than if they chose the safer alternative.

LYNNE BIANCHI, professor of neuroscience, has been at Oberlin since 1998. In 2011 she became coordinator of health career professions, advising neuroscience majors and other students across campus on how to prepare for and apply to medical and allied health profession

schools. She also organizes workshops and seminars throughout the year and recently taught the health career practicum. Her research continues to focus on the growth factors necessary for early neurite outgrowth in the developing inner ear, particularly the discovery of the importance of cytokines in early inner ear development. She is also completing a textbook on developmental neurobiology. Lynn would love to hear from alumni who are working in developmental neurobiology so she can brag about their work in her book.

TRACIE PAINE joined the neuroscience department in 2009 as an assistant professor. A$er her 2012-13 sabbatical, she published three manuscripts based on data collected by Oberlin students, presented posters co-authored by former honors research students Sam Asinof ’12 and Geo" Diehl ’12 at SfN in New Orleans, and was awarded an NIH Academic Research Enhancement Award. !e NIH grant is aimed at understanding the contribution of the inhibitory neurotransmitter, GABA, to cognitive de#cits observed in schizophrenia. In 2013-14, Tracie’s research student Avery O’Hara presented a poster at SfN in San Diego, and Elizabeth Cooke and Ben Plaut presented at the Midwest and Great Lakes Undergraduate Research Symposium. Tracie and Sam Asinof also published a paper in the Journal of Visualized Experiments. In 2013-20, Tracie taught Neuropharmacology and the accom-panying lab, Intro to Neuroscience; a senior seminar titled !e Neurobiology of Mental Illness; and a new neuroscience-focused #rst-year seminar entitled !e Synaptic Self.

PATRICK SIMEN joined the department as an assistant professor in fall 2011. !is year he co-taught Intro to Neuroscience and the in-tro lab and Cognitive Neuroscience and the accompanying lab. His research focuses on testing behavioral and physiological predictions of a random-walk model of decision-making and interval timing in humans. He published several papers on these topics in the past

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CHANGING OF THE GUARD...

THE NEUROSCIENCE DEPARTMENT gratefully acknowledges the dedicated service of Casey Ross, our administrative assistant since 2007, who has moved on to another administrative assistant posi-tion in the admissions office. Casey’s tales of world travels taken by she and her partner, Rich, will be missed, and we wish her the best in her new position.

At the same time, we welcome Kristi Gibson as Casey’s replace-ment. Kristi began in Dec. 2012, after working previously for the College. She is a Firelands-area resident whose three school-age children occasionally brighten the department with their visits. Despite the logistical challenges we face in this transition, Kristi is off to a great start, and we look forward to working with her!

year and is revising a co-authored submission with student Sam Papadakis. He heads o" to a year of junior-faculty research leave, which he plans to spend in Oberlin and in Ann Arbor, Mich.

LESLIE DOWELL KWAKYE ’06 started her #rst year as an assistant professor in the fall of 2013. !is year she taught a lecture and lab on sensory neuroscience. She also taught a senior seminar titled Mind, Brain, Eyes, and Ears and the Introductory Neuroscience Lab. Over the past year, she has worked with 12 students in her research lab, studying how the brain combines information from the di"erent senses and how cognitive factors such as attention modulate this multisensory integration. Last fall, she presented her work on the e"ects of attention on multisensory integration at the Society for Neuroscience conference in San Diego California with one of her students, Enimielen Aligbe.

GUNNAR KWAKYE joined the department in spring 2012 as a visit-ing assistant professor and transitioned to a tenure-track assis-tant professor in fall 2013. !is year he taught Neurotoxicology and Neurodegeneration, the Introductory Neuroscience Lab, and a senior seminar titled Gene-Environment Interactions in Neurological Disorders. In fall 2013, his research student Gi$y Dominah received the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS) travel award to present her research at ABRCMS in Nashville, Tenn., where she presented an award-winning poster. Gunnar’s lab employs mouse and human neuronal cultures of Huntington’s, Parkinson’s, and other neu-rodegenerative diseases to understand the interaction between genetics and the environment in triggering neurodegenerative disease. His lab is studying interactions between pesticides and other neurotoxicant exposures in neurodegenerative disease states and aims to corroborate its #ndings in in vivo models.

SIOBHAN ROBINSON joined the department in 2013 from a visiting assistant professor position at Dartmouth. Her courses this year included the neuroanatomy lecture and lab and the Introduction to Neuroscience lecture and lab. A$er setting up her Learning and Memory research lab during the fall term, she was joined by students Julie Adelman and Peter D’Auria to pursue questions pertaining to the hippocampal memory system in a rodent model. Her summer docket includes student-led research projects con-ducted by Julie Adelman, Jessica Hubert, and Anastasia Shou. Siobhan submitted a review and a research article during her #rst year and received an Oberlin College Teaching Grant, which will support her travel to Duke University and to Carleton College to discuss teaching pedagogy in neuroscience.

ALBERT BORRONI ’85 arrived at Oberlin in 1996 and is a lecturer in neuroscience and computer science. He is director of the Oberlin Center for Technologically Enhanced Teaching (OCTET) and teaches a seminar on Mind and Machine.

KEITH DOWNING is a professor of computer science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. During winter

term 2014, he taught a computational modelin course, Intelligence Emerging.

GIGI KNIGHT, instructional and technical assistant, has been with the neuroscience department almost since its inception. She assists with laboratory instruction, provides technical support, and assists students with their research projects.

LORI LINDSEY has been the animal caretaker since 2003.

KRISTI GIBSON joined the department as administrative assistant.

FORREST ROSE and DOROTHY AUBLE continue to help with facilities management and departmental ordering, respectively.

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Clockwise, from top left: 1. Gigi Knight in the neurophysiology lab. 2. Props from Mark and Cathy's retirement party in April 2013. 3. A beautiful spring day for the Neuro Majors Committee picnic. 4. Richard McGuire, Marcelo Vinces, Kaetlyn Schmittgen, Eni Aligbe, Michelle Johnson, Leslie Kwakye, Gifty Dominah, Gunnar Kwakye, and Allison Williams. Michelle, Gifty, and Kaeti won awards for their poster presentations at ABRCMS in Nashville. 5. Department co-founder Dennison Smith and Jan Thornton reunite at Mark and Cathy’s retirement party.

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PLAN TO ATTEND the Oberlin neuroscience reunion at the 2014 Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington, D. C. We will gather somewhere close to the SfN meeting. Information will be posted on our website and emailed to neuroscience alumni and friends on our mailing list (contact kristi.gibson@oberlin.edu if you aren’t on our mailing list). If you have suggestions for a venue or are willing to help orga-nize the event, please contact Jan !ornton (jan.thornton@oberlin.edu).

Save the Date: Oberlin Reunion at 2014 SfN Meeting in Washington, D.C.!

NEUROSCIENCE MAJORS: Formal and Informal Activities By Avery O’Hara, NMC Co-chair

THE GOAL OF THE NEUROSCIENCE MAJORS COMMITTEE (NMC) this year was to strengthen the community of neuroscience majors and organize events for students to get to know faculty members. NMC the semester with a get-together in the Love Lounge and with journal clubs to discuss papers written by speakers coming to Oberlin. Next, NMC held the annual t-shirt design competition with the winning t-shirt design, “when I move you move, just like that.” Neuroscience majors also got a chance to talk with Professor Scott Swartzwelder over pizza dinner following his lecture. Swartzwelder was visiting Oberlin for a semester and taught the module course Thinking about Drinking: Alcohol and the Brain. Finally, NMC organized the annual neuroscience potluck where students could get to know other majors and faculty members over food and treats.

The spring semester marked the new term for NMC officers. Sarah Page and Sasha Mitts will be taking over as co-chairs. Peter Arden and Tania Mukherjee are taking over as student faculty liaisons. Gifty

Dominah will be taking over as secretary and treasurer, and Sarah Ebb will be organizing the annual t-shirt contest. The goals for the NMC include organizing more fun events for majors to get together, and a float in the Big Parade! Enjoy the coming new year!

Neuro majors built a brain for Oberlin’s fabled Big Parade in May.

NEURO DEPARTMENT SEMINARSNicholas C. SpitzerUniversity of California at San DiegoSwitching Neurotransmitters: Novel Brain Plasticity

Anne M. EtgenAlbert Einstein College of MedicineNeuroprotective actions of estrogens: mechanisms and therapeutic interventions?

Scott SwartzwelderDuke UniversityDude, where’s my car? Alcohol and the adolescent brain

Evan DenerisCase Western Reserve UniversityGene regulatory mechanisms controlling maturation and maintenance of serotonin neuron-type identity

Erik HerzogUniversity of WashingtonWhat wakes us up? Networked clocks in the brain

The Seymour Benzer Lecture in Neuroscience:Edward A. KravitzHarvard Medical SchoolGenetic manipulations in the fruit fly fight club: How do amine neurons work?, and A new department, a new transmitter compound, a war and a movement, or how I spent the ’60s and early ’70s

Michael AschnerAlbert Einstein College of MedicineNature and nurture in Parkinson’s Disease: Crosstalk between genes and manganese toxicity

NeuroNews is a newsletter for alumni and friends of the Oberlin College Department of Neuroscience. Let us know some of the signi!cant happenings in your lives.

Send comments/news to:NeuroNewsOberlin College Department of Neuroscience 119 Woodland StOberlin OH 44074

(440) 775-8768 orKristi.Gibson@oberlin.eduJan.thornton@oberlin.edu

Webpage: www.oberlin.edu/nsci

SEND US YOUR NEWS!

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STUDENT AND FACULTY PUBLICATIONS* denotes student researcher

*Aligbe, E., *Eggleston, B.A., & Kwakye, L.D. (2013) Attention is necessary for the integration of audiovisual speech stimuli but unnecessary for the integration of non-speech stimuli. Poster at the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) annual meeting, San Diego, CA.

*Aronson, S., *Amlie-Wolf, A., & Loose, M.D. (2012) Making predictions in a stochastic environment: Strategies underlying the probability matching phenomenon and corresponding event-relat-ed potentials. Poster at the SfN annual meeting, New Orleans, LA.

*Asinof, S.K., & Paine T.A. (2013). Inhibition of GABA syn-thesis in the prefrontal cortex increases locomotor activity but does not a"ect attention in the 5-choice serial reaction time task. Neuropharmacology, 65, 39-47.

*Asinof, S.K., & Paine, T.A. (in press). !e 5-choice serial reaction time task: A task of attention and impulse control for rodents. !e Journal of Visualized Experiments.

Balci, F. & Simen, P. (in press) A dri$-di"usion account of tempo-ral discrimination. Acta Psychologica.

*Diehl, G.W., *Wachtel, J.M., & Paine, T.A. (2013) Cue-induced conditioned activity does not incubate but is mediated by the basolateral amygdala. Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, 104, 69-79.

*Dominah, G. & Kwakye, G. (2013) Investigation of the e"ects of the pesticide chlorpyrifos and its metabolites in Huntington’s disease neuropathology. Poster at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS), Nashville, TN.

*Dominah, G. & Kwakye, G. (2013) Exposure to the common pesticide chlorpyrifos induces oxidative stress and cell death in a cell model of Huntington’s disease. Oberlin College Research Fellowship (OCRF) Summer Poster Presentation Day, July 2013.

*Goldberg, A., *Riordan, A., *Burnham, V. & !ornton, J. (2013) Development of an immunohistochemical assay to detect cell proliferation de#cits in the dentate gyrus of rats a$er subchronic PCP treatment. Poster at the Midwest/Great Lakes Undergraduate Research Symposium in Neuroscience (MGluRs), Crawfordsville, IN.

*Johnson, M. & Kwakye, L.D. (2013) !e in%uence of genetic variability in the autism risk gene GABRB3 in multisensory inte-gration. Poster presented at ABRCMS. Nashville, TN.

Kerchner, M., Hardwick, J.C., & !ornton, J.E. (2012). Identifying and using ‘Core Competencies’ to help design and assess undergraduate neuroscience curricula. Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education, 6(2), A1-A3.

Kerchner, M., Hardwick, J., !ornton, J.E. (2012) Undergraduate neuroscience ‘core competencies’ and their e"ective use in design and assessment of undergraduate neuroscience curricula. Poster at the SfN annual meeting, New Orleans LA.

Kwakye, L.D., *Eggleston,B.A., & *Aligbe, E.D. (2013) Attention shi$s the temporal relationship between audiovisual stimuli and enlarges the temporal window of integration. Poster at the SfN annual meeting, San Diego, CA.

*McConnell, S.E., *Alla, J., *Wheat, E., Romeo, R., McEwen B.S., and !ornton, J.E. (2012) !e role of testicular hormones and lu-teinizing hormone in spatial memory in adult male rats. Hormones and Behavior, 61: 479-486.

*McDonald, K. & Kwakye, L.D. (2013) Con#rmation and Optimization of Child-!emed Attentional Cueing Task. Poster presented at ABRCMS, Nashville, TN.

*O’Hara, A., *Plaut, B., *Lowes, D.C., & Paine T.A. (2013) E"ects of decreasing cortical GABA transmission on decision-making in rats. Poster presented at the SfN Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA.

Olivo, R.F., Burdo, J.R., Calin-Jageman, R., Grisham, W.E., Linden, M.L., Rosenberg, R.L., Symonds, L.L., & !ornton, J.E. (2013). ERIN: Resources to enhance the teaching of neuroscience. Poster presented at the SfN annual meeting. San Diego, CA.

Paine, T.A., *Asinof, S.K., *Diehl, G.W., *Frackman, A., *Le&er, J. (2013) Medial prefrontal cortex lesions impair decision-making on a rodent gambling task: reversal by D1 receptor antagonist administration. Behavioural Brain Research, 243, 247-254.

Paine, T.A. & *Cooke E (2013). Chronic inhibition of cortical GABA synthesis does not impair attention. Poster presented at the SfN annual meeting. San Diego, CA.

continued on page 6

Dr. Michael Aschner of Albert Einstein College of Medicine presents his research on neurotoxic effects of manganese.

*Park, M. Y. & Kwakye, G. (2013) Methoxychlor and Huntington’s disease. 4th Annual Senior Symposium. Oberlin College. Spring 2013.

*Park, M. Y. , *Glass, T., & Kwakye, G. (2012) Pesticides and Huntington’s disease: investigation of gene-environment interac-tion in Huntington’s disease and pesticides”, Oberlin College Undergraduate Summer Research Poster Day. Fall 2012.

*Riordan, A., *Goldberg, A., & !ornton, J. (2013). A Luteinizing Hormone inhibitor amerliorates object recognition de#cits in a rodent model of schizophrenia. Poster presented at MGluRs, Crawfordsville, IN.

*Roseman, A.S., *McGregor, C., & !ornton, J.E. (2012) Estradiol attenuates the cognitive de#cits in the novel object recognition task induced by sub-chronic phencyclidine in ovariectomized rats. Behavioral Brain Research, 233: 105-112.

Simen, P., Rivest, F., Ludvig, E. A., Balci, F. & Killeen, P. (2013) Timescale invariance in the pacemaker-accumulator family of timing models. Timing and Time Perception, 1:159-188.

Simen, P. (2013). Decision making and reward, computational perspectives. In: Pashler, H. (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Mind, Vol. 1, Sage Reference, 218-220.

Simen, P. (2014). Di"usion, decisions, and timing. Talk presented at Winter Conference on Brain Research, Steamboat Springs, CO.

Simen, P. & Balci, F. (2013). Subdivide and conquer: A model of precise and imprecise timing. Talk presented at the 35th annual meeting of the Brazilian Society of Neuroscience and Behavior, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Simen, P. (2013). Pacemaker-accumulator models, old & new. Talk

presented at the 2nd Brazilian Meeting on Brain and Cognition, Sao Paulo, Brazil.

*Sundby, C., *Laman-Maharg, A., *Witcher, K., *Stewart, B. & !ornton, J.E. (2012). Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (a Luteinizing Hormone homo-logue) acts at the dorsal hip-pocampus and prefrontal cortex to inhibit spatial memory in estrogen-treated female rats. Poster at the SfN annual meet-ing, New Orleans LA.

Teslovich, T., Mulder, M., Franklin, N., Ruberry, E., Millner, A., Somerville, L.H., Simen, P., Durston, S. & Casey, B. J. (2013). Adolescents let su'cient evidence accumulate before making a decision when large incentives are at stake. Developmental Science, 17:59-70.

!ornton, J.E. (2014). E"ects of Luteinizing Hormone on spatial memory and the hippocampus of female rats. Organizer and speaker at the symposium: Luteinizing Hormone and Its Relationship to Memory and Alzheimer’s Disease, presented at the joint meeting of the International Congress of Neuroendocrinology and the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology, Sydney Australia.

vanVugt, M., Simen, P., Nystrom, L., Holmes, P. & Cohen, J. D. (2014). Lateralized readiness potentials in decision making reveal properties of a neural threshold mechanism. PLoS One, 9(3): e90943.

*Vlasov, K. & Simen, P. (2012). !ou shalt not exceed square root of 2/3: A generalized form of Weber’s Law predicted by the dri$-di"usion model of decision making and interval timing, plus data that support it. Poster presented at the Mathematical Biosciences Institute, Workshop 2: Cognitive Neuroscience, Columbus, OH.

*Witcher, K., *Burnham, V., *Goldberg, A., *Sundby, C., *Michaelson, N., & !ornton, J. (2013). A Luteinizing Hormone (LH) homologue acts to impair spatial memory in the hip-pocampus and prefrontal cortex, areas with cells positive for LH-receptors. Poster presented at the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology, Atlanta GA.

Woynaroski, T., Kwakye, L., Foss-Feig, J., Stevenson, R., Stone, W., Wallace, M. (2013) Multisensory Speech Perception in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 43(12):2891-902.

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“If I Only Had a Brain!” Eli Goldberg with brain-toting scarecrow

Students in Siobhan Robinson’s Neuroanatomy Laboratory Course, fall 2013, in front of a projection of a slide they prepared of pyramidal cells from the rat cerebral cortex (also serving as this newsletter's masthead).

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THIS YEAR a large group of outstanding seniors became mem-bers of the Oberlin chapter of Nu Rho Psi, the national honor so-ciety in neuroscience. They include Alec Berman, Elizabeth Cooke, Rachel Bergman, Sophia Brancazio, Laura Burnside, Kelly Drumm, Jarrett Fastman, Dan Melzer, Molly Martorella, Gabe Marx, Sarah Reach, Matt Tunzi, and Eric Weaver. Current junior and sophomore members of Nu Rho Psi include Weelic Chong, Jason Freedman, Kate Frost, Hannah Gilfix, Hannah Golay, Michelle Johnson, Emma Lehmann, Dan Lowes, Carey Lyons and Sarah Page. Certificates and pins were given out at the annual induc-tion ceremony in May. To be invited for membership, neuroscience majors must have a minimum GPA of 3.5 in Neuroscience courses and other courses needed to fulfill the major and a cumulative college GPA of at least 3.2.

Nu Rho Psi, Neuroscience Honor Society: Activities and New Membersby Jan Thornton, advisor, Oberlin’s chapter of Nu Rho Psi

STEM NIGHT WELCOMES COMMUNITY TO SCIENCE CENTER

OBERLIN’S FIRST ‘STEM NIGHT’ was held May 9 in the Science Center for Prospect Elementary students, hosted by the America Reads program in the Bonner Center for Service and Learning and CLEAR (Center for Learning, Education and Research in the Sciences). !e goal was to show Prospect Elementary students and their families the fun stu" that goes on in the Science Center, and thereby to encourage dreams of opportunities in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math). Faculty and students from Biology, Chemistry, Geology and Physics gave demonstrations, and Neuroscience faculty Leslie Kwakye and Pat Simen opened their labs to demonstrate perceptual illusions, MRI data analysis and Lego Robots. Jan !ornton gave a hand too. It was a great way to show the community the science happening in their midst.

Organizer Maureen Simen with raffle winner Korey Russell, proudly holding his new microscope!

A new generation of microscopists has fun while hard at work in their new lab coats.

THE SEYMOUR BENZER LECTURE

Edward A. Kravitz, PhDGeorge Packer Berry Professor of NeurobiologyHarvard Medical School

March 17, 2014Genetic manipulations in the fruit fly fight club: how do amine neurons work?

March 18, 2014A new department, a new transmitter compound, a war and a movement, or how I spent the ’60s and early ’70s

In 1960, while at NIH as a post-doc with P. Roy Vagelos and Earl Stadtman, I was contacted by Stephen W. Ku&er, who had started a new laboratory in the Department of Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. Steve was the visionary who felt that to understand the nervous system one had to put neurophysiologists together with biochemists and anatomists, and he asked if I

would join the laboratory as a biochemist. !is lecture describes that early period when Steve, Dave Potter, Torsten Wiesel, Dave Potter, and Ed Furshpan, along with Bob Bosler as the electronics engineer, moved from the Wilmer Institute at Johns Hopkins University to form a Laboratory of Neurophysiology and Neuropharmacology at Harvard Medical School. !at laboratory ultimately became the #rst neurobiology department in the world. During that early exciting period, many important and fundamental discoveries were made. Hubel and Wiesel were carrying out the experiments that led to the award of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1981. I was part of the team that identi#ed GABA as a transmitter compound.

!at was done in the face of an international neuroscience community that did not believe that GABA was a transmitter compound. !e 1960s also were a decade of great political turmoil in the U.S., with a very unpopular war going on in Vietnam that killed and maimed uncountable numbers of Americans and Vietnamese and that destroyed a country. It was also the start of the civil rights movement, which ultimately and with momentous struggle and sacri#ce led to the overturn of segregation in the south and to federal laws guaranteeing the fundamental rights of citizenship to all. !e brutality shown by authorities during that period spread to college and university campuses and led to the start of national movements opposed to the war and racism and to a national STRIKE on college campuses. My o'ce at Harvard Medical School was the STRIKE Center at HMS. !e 2nd half of this lecture describes the activities that I as part of an ad-hoc group of politically active colleagues and students engaged in at the medical school. Such activities, among other things, led to Harvard Medical School assuming a nation-leading role in minority admissions at traditional white medical schools, a role that it continues to maintain to the present day.

CONGRATS TO SENIOR NEURO AWARDEES!NANCY ROBELL MEMORIAL PRIZE IN NEUROSCIENCE Awarded to seniors who show outstanding promise in the #eld of neuroscience:

Veronica Burnham

NEUROSCIENCE DEPARTMENT PRIZE Awarded to senior neuroscience majors for academic excellence:

Sophia BrancazioMolly MartorellaHillary MullanMatt Tunzi

More scences from the Neuroscience Majors Committee Picnic: Tracie Paine chats with Molly Martorella (left); Joel Ginn chats with Ari Schaler (right).

Top: Two male fruit flies fight for the right to mate. Botton: Ed Kravitz (left) with Seymour Benzer.

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ALUMNI NEWS

Adriana Akintobi ’11 writes: “I’m currently in Philadelphia working at a small nonprof-it that facilitates organ and tissue donation for research. Not exactly what I pictured a$er school, but I’m enjoying it and still learning every day, so I’m happy.”

Chelsea Arata ’13 will begin her master’s in nursing at the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing in Nashville.

Sage Aronson ’12 writes: “I will attend UCSD’s neurosciences program. I received a summer fellowship to start ASAP.”

Gabi Bromberg ’11 writes: “I just got back to New York from a pre-medical school trip through the West Coast, Europe, and Israel. A$er a long deliberation process, I decided that I’m going to attend Columbia.”

Mary Burke ’11 writes: “I was living in Cleveland until a few months ago, working at the VA Hospital in a neuropharmacology lab. I just moved back to the east coast (I’m a N.Y. native) to New Haven, Conn., where I will start a neuroscience PhD program at Yale in a few months,"

Ben Greene ’06 writes: “I spent two years at UPenn and #nished my fMRI project on the role of Brodmann areas 44, 45, and 47 in cognitive control functions associated with language. I moved back to the west coast to direct and produce a feature-length #lm about the Redwood forest. I recently moved to Bellingham, Wash., with my wife Christina. “

Karen Gunther ’92 just received tenure in the psychology department at Wabash College.

Nathan Harris ’11 has been awarded an NSF predoctoral fellowship. He is studying synaptic plasticity at the neuromuscular junction in the fruit %y at UCSF.

Matt Hartsock ’12 writes: “I got the research technologist position at Johns Hopkins! I’ll be studying retinopathy in Elia Duh’s lab with three postdocs and two other techni-cians, probably for about three years.”

Blair Stewart ’12 is working in a behavioral neuroscience laboratory at Oregon Health

& Sciences University.

Chris Sundby ’12 began a combined JD/PhD program in law and neuroscience at Vanderbilt last fall.

Craig Surman ’94 co-wrote (with Tom Bilkey) a book on adult ADHD called Fast Minds: How to !rive if you have ADHD (or think you might). He is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and scienti#c coordinator of the adult ADHD Research Program at Mass General Hospital.

Laura Kanter ’08 writes: “Great news! I received an o"er from my #rst choice [grad school], the University of Washington. I will start the program this June! !anks again for all your help. I look forward to seeing you in May!”

David Leland ’96 is up for tenure at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, and was expecting a baby girl in February 2014.

Andrea McQuate ’10 writes: “I just #nished my #rst year of graduate school at UW. I will be studying Wnt regulation of synap-tic plasticity in adult hippocampus. Last spring, I received the prestigious ARCS fellowship (achievement rewards for college scientists), for promoting neuroscience

to the community. I’m still very much involved in taiko drumming and working on my many sci # novels.”

Sarah “Uppie” Updegraff ’04 writes: “Dave Andrew ’04 just #nished his PhD in neuro-science at the University of Arizona and is starting a post-doctoral fellowship through the PERT program at the University of Arizona. I’m working as a nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit. And last but not least, Dave and I had a baby on May 10, 2012. His name is Aiven David Ezra Andrew.”

Ksenia Vlasov ’13 writes: “I’m working as a postbac fellow at the National Institute on Aging in a behavioral neuroscience lab that uses in vivo electrophysiology to study how noncholinergic basal forebrain neurons modulate cortical activity in the context of cognitive aging. I’m hoping to apply to grad programs in neuroscience in the fall.

Monica Volk ’11 writes: “I’m working as the administrative assistant for Six Spoke Media, an advertising agency in SF. I know absolutely nothing about advertising, but I’m excited to learn!”

Jon Wachtel ’11 writes: “I’m starting my four-year neuroscience scholarly concentra-

Neuroscience alums Cindy Getschow ’12 and Anrey Wang ’12 wed in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, April 2014.

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OBERLIN NEUROSCIENCE ATTRACTS VISITING FACULTY

tions project in the Kritzer Lab here at Stony Brook [Medical School]. !e program involves conducting a research project with a faculty mentor as well as attending various research seminars and presenting the results in my fourth year.”

Julia Walbridge ’91 is doing a postdoc at Northwestern University. She writes: “I’m using EEG to look at the relationship be-tween auditory-visual integration working memory, and how this relationship in%u-ences reading comprehension.

Anrey Wang ’12 writes: “First, I will be at-tending Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling for a Master’s in Counseling Psychology starting next

Summer 2015. Second, Cindy [Getschow ’12] and I got married this last weekend on the 12th! We had a wonderful outdoor wedding with our close family and friends at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. We will be honeymooning in Costa Rica.”

Liz Waring ’06 writes: “I started my third year of medical school at Tulane University School of Medicine, and I have to admit that I’ve fallen in love with the city. “

Krissy Welch ’13 writes: “I’m living in Chicago working at the ABIS Group, a healthcare industry intelligence company. I’m really enjoying getting to know the business side of healthcare/pharmaceuticals while also putting my collegiate knowledge

of biology/neuroscience and healthcare systems to good use.”

Ariel Whitworth ’03 writes: “A$er #nish-ing my classes at Oberlin, I got an MA in science journalism at Johns Hopkins University. I’ve worked as a science jour-nalist for a number of venues. However, last year I decided to switch career paths again and am currently about a year into a four-year MSTOM (Master’s of Science in Oriental Medicine, acupuncture and herbalism) program at Paci#c College of Oriental Medicine in San Diego.”

During winter term 2014, the students in my

course explored the concept of EMERGENCE from several di"erent perspectives and in many di"erent systems, with a special focus on the brain and the emergence of intelligent behavior at the neural level. !ey read and discussed several dra$ chapters from my book, Intelligence Emerging, as well as several classic papers in the #eld. !ey also implemented a few simple examples of emergent systems in NOVA. We also had a few "game days" involving multi-player contests in which emergence played a pivotal role. Finally, each student gave a presentation of a well-documented emergent system that stimulated their curiosity.

The Neuroscience Department, the college, the conservatory, and the town of Oberlin as a whole have much to offer visiting scholars. Keith Downing, a native Ohioan and a computational modeler, regularly joins us during winter terms and lives in town during the summer with his family. Scott Swartzwelder, whose wife and daughter are Obies, researches the effects of drugs on the adolescent brain. He is co-author of the book Buzzed in addition to other titles. Here they tell us about the courses they taught.

During my half-semester at Oberlin I had the good

fortune to teach 40 of the most engaged students I’ve encountered anywhere, cultivate scienti#c collaborations with several of my eager and innovative colleagues in the Department of Neuroscience, and listen to and play jazz in the Oberlin Conservatory. It was an action-packed “module,” to say the least. 

My research centers on the e"ects that drugs exert on the brain, speci#cally on developing neural circuits during adolescence. I presented some of our most recent work in a seminar at Oberlin, and in the following days both students and faculty sought me out to discuss the #ndings in more detail. Some of those discussions evolved into plans for future experiments, and others resulted in Oberlin students contemplating medical or research careers and identifying sites for summer research to get more acquainted with the scienti#c process. For me, it was both stimulating and gratifying to be surrounded by such intellectually alive and genuinely nice people. I’ll be happy to come back for an encore anytime!

Alcohol and the BrainScott SwartzwelderDuke Univesity University of North Carolina

Intelligence EmergingKeith DowningNorwegian University of Science and TechnologyTrondheim, Norway

ALUMNI NEWS (CONTINUED)

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TRAVELS IN ASIA By Billy Broderick ’13 2013-14 Luce Scholar

I’m spending this year in Guangzhou, China, doing research at South China Normal University as a Luce

Scholar. At SCNU, I am a member of Suiping Wang’s lab, where I work on two research projects. !e #rst project is a computational model of numeros-ity using deep learning in an arti#cial neural network, examining how the model encodes numerosity information

and whether this changes based on task condition. !e second project is a graph theoretical analysis of fMRI data com-paring the network properties of brain functional networks during the reading of Chinese and English.

Outside of the lab, I spend my time learning Chinese traditional paint-ing, playing badminton, exploring Guangzhou itself, cooking, learning Cantonese, and eating my way across the city. As the third-largest city in China,

an international commercial center, and the home of Cantonese dimsum, Guangzhou has plenty of cuisines to explore. Restaurants serving food from Sichuan, Yunnan, Shanxi, Xinjiang (all Chinese provinces with vastly di"erent foods), Vietnam, Indonesia, Turkey, the Middle East, as well as all manner of Cantonese specialties are scattered throughout the city, and it has become my goal to try as many as possible before my too-short-year has ended.

!e Luce Scholarship has also given me many opportunities to travel. I start-ed this year with a summer in Beijing, continuing my study of Mandarin for two months while living among the café- and bar-lined hutongs just northeast of the Forbidden City. In early September, following a brief visa run to Seoul, I moved to Guangzhou to start work. Between then and now, I have rambled through the streets of Shanghai, trav-eled to !ailand for the Luce Scholars mid-year meeting, headed to Beijing for !anksgiving dinner with a pack of Obies, visited Japan with eight mem-bers of my family before showing them around China, explored Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia with a gaggle of Luce Scholars over Chinese New Year, met up with the current class of China Shansi fellows in Taigu, China, and popped over the border to Hong Kong several times. And in the coming months, I will bike around Taiwan, hike in Yunnan, and take too many long-distance buses and trains around the northwestern Chinese prov-

inces of Gansu, Qinghai, and Xinjiang, before concluding my year at the wrap-up meeting in Myanmar.

!is year has been an incredible experi-ence, and I feel extraordinarily fortunate to have been given the opportunity to do research that I #nd engaging while also traveling around Asia and visiting places that I barely knew of a year ago. It has also emphasized the importance of international collaboration in the sci-ences, especially cognitive neuroscience, where #ndings are likely to be in%uenced by culture or language, and second lan-guage learning among American science students—while almost all of the profes-sors and graduate students at SCNU speak English to some degree, I am the only foreign collaborator who speaks any Mandarin. I hope to return to China in the future, but regardless, as I continue my education and career in science, I will take these lessons and my experiences this year with me.

Prof. Wang (front row, center in purple) and her lab of Master’s and PhD students, as well as a couple undergrads who work with the lab. Billy and a visiting German PhD student are in back.

The father of Billy’s boss, a painter, calligra-pher, and journalist, teaches him how to paint Chinese traditional paintings.

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Billy visits Angkor Wat near Siem Reap, Cambodia, during Chinese New Year with other Luce Scholars. This is the central tower (just one of over 20 temples in the area).

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PAIDOBERLIN, OHIOPERMIT NO. 8

Anna AronowitzRachel BergmanAlec BermanMarissa BlackwellSophia BrancazioVeronica BurnhamLaura BurnsideTheo CarneyAnna CibilsElizabeth CookeDominic D’AndreaPeter D’AuriaHannah DaneshvarKelly DrummBrady EgglestonJarrett Fastman

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CONGRATULATIONS NEW GRADS!Warm congratulations to our graduating neuroscience majors and their families. We wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors. Please keep in touch!

GIFTS FOR 2013-2014 THE DEPARTMENT OF NEUROSCIENCE is indebted to the individuals and families who have generously provided gi$s to enhance our academic program. Your contribu-tions have helped students complete their research proj-ects and present their data at national meetings. !ey have also been used, in part, for the Neuroscience Prize to honor outstanding seniors. We are grateful for your #nancial support. A special thanks to Je"rey C. Allen ’65, Gabriel P. & Sara L. Frommer ’57/’58, Arnaldo A. Garro ’89, Karen L. Gunther ’92, Armin Rahmanian ’97, Craig H. Shopneck ’76, Mark A. Shuldiner ’09, and Amy B. Wisniewski ’94.

If you would like to make a contribution, please send a check payable to Oberlin College to the O'ce of Development, Oberlin College, 50 W. Lorain St., Oberlin OH, 44074. Please write “neuroscience department” in the memo line. You may also use the online donation form at www.oberlin.edu/giving/donate or contact Oberlin’s development o'ce at (800) 693-3167.