News and Events Archive

Jason Breves Awarded the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Service Award

Jason Breves, Postdoc and Associate Member of the NSB Program, was awarded the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA), National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Individual Postdoctoral Training Grant.  Congratulations to Dr. Breves.

Remage-Healey wins Frank A. Beach Award in Behavioral Neuroendocrinology

The Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology has announced that the recipient of the 2012 Frank A. Beach Award is Dr. Luke Remage-Healey, assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The award is made to a new investigator, normally within eight years post-PhD (or MD) who shows exceptional promise for making significant contributions to the field of Behavioral Neuroendocrinology. Dr. Remage-Healey was honored at the Behavioral Neuroendocrinology Social at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in New Orleans, and he will present his lecture at SBN's annual meeting in Atlanta in June 2013.

Dr. Remage-Healey worked in the laboratory of Michael Romero at Tufts as an undergraduate, received his PhD working in the lab of Andy Bass at Cornell, and then did a postdoc with Barney Schlinger at UCLA. Dr. Remage-Healey's website describes his work as follows:
"Our lab is focused on the study of behavioral physiology, specifically the non-traditional regulation of brain function and behavior by steroid hormones. Steroids are produced within discrete neural circuits ('neurosteroids') and can therefore influence behavior via local and acute actions within those circuits. We study these phenomena in songbirds using a variety of technical approaches including in vivo microdialysis, electrophysiology, immunocytochemistry, and neuropharmacology. Songbirds offer a unique model system in which brain steroid production is widespread and especially pronounced, and in which the development and expression of a suite of social behaviors is accessible in the laboratory and natural environments."
Congratulations to Dr. Remage-Healey!

Melinda Novak - Recipient of Distinguished Primatologist Award

The American Society of Primatologists (ASP) presented Dr. Melinda Novak with the Distinguished Primatologist Award at their Annual  Meeting, September 16-19, 2011 in Austin Texas.  In the 34 years of  their existence, this is only the 16th time the ASP has chosen to bestow this award. The Distinguished Primatologist Award honors a primatologist who has had an outstanding career and made significant contributions to the field. Dr. Novak is one of the world's leading experts on the psychological well-being of non-human primates, and as a recipient of this award, she will be invited to deliver the Distinguished Primatologist Address at the 2012 meeting of the Society.

NSB Faculty Member, Heather Richardson, Receives Funding from NIH to Study Binge Drinking and Brain Development.

NIH’s Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse recently awarded Dr. Heather N. Richardson a $400,000 grant.  Dr. Richardson’s Neurobiology of Stress and Addiction Laboratory will use a rodent model of voluntary binge drinking to investigate how alcohol impacts myelinated axons within the prefrontal cortex.  This part of the brain plays an executive role in controlling emotions and making decisions, but it is one of the last brain regions to mature. This work could have important implications for understanding how risky drinking in teenagers might alter myelinization of neural circuits to have long-lasting consequences on psychiatric health.