What does Medial Frontal Cortex Signal During Behavior? Insights from Behavioral Neurophysiology

Adam Thomas Brockett – Dr. Adam Brockett is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Maryland, College Park working in the laboratory of Professor Matthew Roesch, exploring the neural correlates of cognitive control across the lifespan. Adam attended the University of Maryland, College Park earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology, and a minor in Neuroscience in 2011. Throughout his undergraduate career, Adam worked as a Student Intramural Research Training Awardee (IRTA) at the NIH in the laboratory of Dr. James Winslow investigating the effects of fluoxetine and differential rearing on social behaviors in rhesus macaques. Following graduation, Adam was a post-baccalaureate fellow (IRTA) at the NIH and worked to develop molecular techniques for the generation of transgenic marmosets under the guidance of Dr. James Pickel. Adam received his PhD from Princeton University working with Professor Elizabeth Gould in 2017. His work with Professor Gould characterized the role of astrocytes in medial prefrontal cortex function and their contributions to cognitive control. Adam received a F32 Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) in the spring of 2019. Linda M. Amarante – Dr. Linda M. Amarante recently received her PhD in neuroscience from American University in Spring 2020. At American University, she performed research in Dr. Mark Laubach’s laboratory studying the medial frontal cortex and its role in reward-based behaviors and value-based decision making in rats. Her dissertation work investigated the role of the medial and orbital frontal cortices in signaling reward information, which was supported by a Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP) from the National Science Foundation in 2016. Linda received undergraduate degrees in Psychology and English from Long Island University in 2013, where she performed research on opioids and prenatal mouse development under the guidance of Dr. Grace Rossi. Linda also currently curates projects and runs social media for the Open Behavior project, which is a repository of open-source tools for behavioral neuroscience. She will begin a post-doctoral fellowship with Dr. Jeremiah Cohen at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Mark Laubach – Dr. Laubach is a professor of neuroscience at American University. His lab studies the role of the medial frontal cortex in goal-directed behavior. Core methods include multi-electrode recordings, optogenetics, multivariate statistics, and computational models of neural circuits. The lab is currently supported by the NIH to study the role of opioid receptors in the prefrontal cortex in reward-guided decisions. In addition, Dr. Laubach and his lab collaborate with Dr. Alexxai Kravitz from Washington University to run the OpenBehavior project, which promotes open-source tools used in behavioral neuroscience research. Dr. Laubach is Director of American University’s PhD program in neuroscience and serves on the editorial boards of eNeuro, The Journal of Neuroscience, and Behavioral Neuroscience. Matthew R. Roesch – Dr. Roesch’s research investigates the neural mechanisms underlying executive control, and their disturbance in drug abuse. Specifically, Dr. Roesch’s lab records single unit activity from multiple brain regions as rats perform a variety of behavioral tasks (e.g. reversal, delay discounting, stop-signal, set-shifting, conflict, social distress, etc) and evaluate loss of function after pharmacological and optogenetic manipulation. Dr. Roesch has over 20 years of experience performing, analyzing, and publishing on this type of research. He completed his dissertation work in the lab of Dr. Carl Olson in the Department of Neuroscience (CNUP) and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC) at the University of Pittsburgh. There, he recorded from single neurons in several areas in primate frontal and medial cortex during performance of reward and conflict based saccade tasks. After graduating, he accepted a position as post-doctoral fellow on the Cellular and Integrative Neuroscience Post-Doctoral Training Grant at the University of Maryland Medical School under the advisement of Dr. Geoff Schoenbaum. There he continued his work on issues pertaining to value-guided decision-making and reversal learning. Dr. Roesch is currently full professor at the University of Maryland College Park as part of the Department of Psychology and the Program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science. He is Cognitive and Neural Systems Area Head for Psychology, and Associate Director and Admissions Director for the Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program.

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