Stories of Women in Neuroscience

This episode features Nancy’s interview with Vidhya who studies energy supply and demand in the brain

This episode features Meenakshi’s interview with Ev who studies the neuroscience of language. Dr. Ev Fedorenko grew up in a time of transition in Russia, at the end of the Soviet Union. Despite financial challenges and the rapid political changes in the region, her parents worked diligently to provide a stable environment in which Ev could prioritize her education. In this environment, Ev found a passion for languages. While she studied, her mother mandated that everyone else in the house walk on tiptoes to preserve Ev’s focus. This love for languages has persisted ever since; Ev is now an associate professor of neuroscience in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department at MIT, where she studies the neuroscience of language.

This episode features Nancy’s interview with Kajana who studies the cerebro-spinal networks driving breathing and movement

This episode features Meenakshi’s interview with Gül who studies how psychedelics influence social development and neuroplasticity

This episode features Nancy’s interview with Barbara who studies the neurological basis of substance-use disorders

This episode features Megan’s interview with Brielle who studies the circuit mechanisms of attention dysfunction

This episode features Rianne’s interview with Annie who studies epigenomic regulation of memory and social behaviors.

This episode features Margarida’s interview with Angelina who studies neurodevelopmental disorders in low-resource communities

This episode features Nancy’s interview with Carmen who studies the neuroanatomy and molecular mechanisms of addiction and reward

This episode features Margarida’s interview with Francesca who studies the neuronal basis of spatial cognition

This episode features Rianne’s interview with Lillian who studies sex differences and hormonal regulation of neural circuit activity underlying environmental context-reward associations in substance use disorders

This episode features Margarida’s interview with Sepiedeh who studies the neural underpinnings of the sense of self-motion and orientation in space.

This episode features Meenakshi’s interview with Maria who studies neuronal circuits that support auditory perception and learning

This episode features Meenakshi’s interview with Jessica who studies neuro-immune interactions and the neural circuits underlying sickness symptoms.

This episode features Rianne’s interview with Mary Kay who studies basal ganglia and reward circuitry that regulate motivation and repetitive behaviors.

This episode features Margarida’s interview with Vanessa who studies the neural circuits and mechanisms that govern instinctive behavior in mice

This episode features Nancy’s interview with Karine who studies the neural circuits underlying sensorimotor gating

This episode features Meenakshi’s interview with Rebecca who studies the role of sex and hormones on stress- and fear-related behaviors and neural circuitry

This episode features Catie’s interview with Rocío who studies the roles of mechanotransduction in gastrointestinal function

This episode features Margarida’s interview with Isabella who studies how the human brain allows us to flexibly adapt to new experiences, learn new information and form long-lasting memories

This episode features Rianne’s interview with Liz who studies the gene regulatory mechanisms that underlie psychiatric disease using rodents models of drug use and chronic stress.

This episode features Megan’s interview with Firstname who uses experimentation and modeling to uncover the neural computations underlying complex cognition in health and disease

This episode features Margarida’s interview with Andrea who studies primary headache disorders such as cluster headache by identifying and characterizing genetic markers

This episode features Rianne’s interview with Donna who studies how neural systems encode for motivation and behavioral flexbility using in vivo recordings of neural activity within rat based reward-learning tasks.

This episode features Meenakshi’s interview with Jyoti who integrates neuroimaging, digital health and clinical translation approaches for next-generation mental healthcare solutions

This episode features Meenakshi’s interview with Camilla who studies molecular, synaptic and circuit level mechanisms underlying social behaviors and reward processing

This episode features Rianne’s interview with Dr. Karen Szumlinski who studies the the impact of drugs of abuse on neurochemical signaling in the brain using mouse models.

This episode features Rianne’s interview with Autumn who studies how early-life exercise can influence the development of cognitive functions

This episode features Margarida’s interview with Vanessa who studies how neurovascular coupling develops during the neonatal period using several live imaging approaches.

This episode features Meenakshi’s interview with Farzaneh who studies cortical and cerebellar mechanisms underlying predictive processing using electrophysiological and optical methods in awake behaving mice.

This episode features Meenakshi’s interview with Liberty who studies how speech sounds are represented in the brain using intracranial recordings from epilepsy patients and scalp EEG.

This week, the Stories of Women in Neuroscience team is celebrating the release of our 100th episode. In honor of this, some of the founding members of the podcast - Dr. Nancy Padilla-Coreano, Dr. Catie Profaci, Dr. Megan Kirchgessner, and Daniela Cassataro - recorded a special episode delving into the origins of the podcast and reflecting on what they’ve learned from Episode 1 to now. Join us as we explore ‘the story behind the Stories’, and consider some of the invaluable insights our wonderful interviewees have shared about what it means to be a woman in neuroscience today.

This episode features Meenakshi’s interview with Bing who studies how the brain gives rise to natural behaviors using computational tools

This episode features Margarida’s interview with Jennifer who studies how neuronal activity in the auditory cortex shapes our perception of the outside world

This episode features Chiaki’s interview with Tingting who studies how glial cells regulate homeostatic plasticity, and uses transcriptomic and electrophysiological techniques to study how their functions change in disease states.

This episode features Margarida’s interview with Ana Marija who studies natural genetic and adaptive variation of cognition and related neuronal traits.

This episode features Margarida’s interview with Chunyu Ann who studies how animals make flexible decisions under risk and social influence, and the neural circuit mechanisms underlying these choices.

This episode features Chiaki’s interview with Helen who develops and applies new tools to study neurochemical signaling in learning and disease.

This episode features Caitlin’s interview with Marta who studies how the brain makes predictions and adapts to novel or uncertain environments, and how these mechanism are altered by mental illness

This episode features Meenakshi’s interview with Malavika who studies social recognition and social decision making, and how social and non-social rewards are differentially encoded in the brain.

This episode features Margarida’s interview with Ilary who studies the inhibitory/excitatory changes of the neuronal circuits involved in the pathophysiology of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Frontotemporal Dementia.

This episode features Margarida’s interview with Cláudia who studies how neuronal trafficking dysfunction underlies synapse loss during aging and Alzheimer's disease.

This episode features Rianne’s interview with Christie who studies the underlying neurobiology of motivated behaviors related to addiction and neuropsychiatric disorders

This episode features Nancy’s interview with Lakiesha who uses engineering principles to understand mechanistic changes in the brain resulting from repetitive head impacts.When Dr. Lakiesha Williams chose a microbiology major upon entering Louisiana State University, it was not necessarily because she loved biology. The choice was driven by a desire to emulate her older sister, who loved playing school with Lakiesha and taught her to read at the young age of three. But the copious memorizing inherent in college biology did not capture Lakiesha’s passion. Instead, she excelled in calculus and was drawn to more analytical disciplines. In her second semester, Lakiesha switched her major from microbiology to biological engineering, and she has been thriving in this field ever since. Lakiesha is now an associate professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Florida, where she focuses on brain tissue mechanics in traumatic brain injury and other neuropathologies.

This episode features Rianne’s interview with Meg who studies the neural mechanisms of substance abuse and stress disorders.

This episode features Margarida’s interview with Claire, who studies how internal and external sensory cues are integrated to shape movements and posture during active locomotion, using zebrafish as a model.Dr. Claire Wyart’s passion for science is deeply anchored in the sea. Even before university, she discovered the world of biology by looking and collecting marine life. This passion eventually came full circle when she started to do research using  zebrafish as a model organism, which she still does to this day. Currently, Claire is a Principal Investigator at the Paris Brain Institute, where her lab investigates how sensory cues are integrated to shape movements and posture during active locomotion in the zebrafish.

This episode features Rianne’s interview with Janine who studies processes of memory formation.As an undergraduate, Dr. Janine Kwapis had some trepidation about starting a class in biological psychiatry, having been warned to avoid it because it was “too hard”. Today, however, she’s grateful she wasn’t scared away, as it was that course that helped her discover a lifelong interest in the biological mechanisms of memory. Janine is now an Assistant Professor of Biology at Penn State University, where her lab investigates the epigenetic and molecular processes that underlie memory formation, storage, and updating. While Janine imagines she could have been happy in a range of different careers outside of academic research, she loves having a job where every day is an opportunity to learn something new about the brain. 

This episode features Megan’s interview with Dr. Andrea Gomez who studies the role of RNA splicing in synaptic plasticityDr. Andrea Gomez saw the perfect opportunity to delve into her recent fascination with red blood cells when a classmate’s nose began to bleed during elementary school. Much to her teacher’s horror, Andrea swirled the pooling blood around with a stick, hunting for the tiny red blood cells she had recently learned comprised the liquid. Andrea learned two things from this – teachers don’t approve of impromptu science experiments involving blood, and red blood cells aren’t visible to the naked eye. This was Andrea’s modus operandus as a child; she was fascinated by the invisible elements that compose living things. As a professor of Cellular and Molecular Biology at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute of UC Berkeley, Andrea remains fascinated by the tiny building blocks of biology and has focused in particularly on the study of RNA. Now, she is equipped with upgraded investigative tools – a microscope, and her own lab.

This episode features Megan’s interview with Z Yan who studies octopuses, bumblebees, and is striving for change as a university professor

This episode features Nancy’s interview with Yarimar who studies studies the molecular and neural mechanisms of pain perception in the amygdala.As a curious young student growing up in Puerto Rico, Dr. Yarimar Carrasquillo had always assumed there were two career paths available to those who had a talent for math and science: engineering or medical school. Then, as a pre-med biology student at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, the world of laboratory research burst into her awareness. The idea that at her university, there were real scientists working in big labs with benches, chemicals, and microscopes felt to her like something out of Hollywood, and totally irresistible. “I just wanted to experience a real research lab, like in the movies,” she said. Now, as a Principal Investigator of her own lab at the National Institute of Health, Yarimar is living out her cinematic dreams studying the cellular and molecular mechanisms of pain.