Faculty and Students Attend Psychology Conference
On Saturday, May 4, over 30 Psychology and Neuroscience students (including three DeNardo Science scholars) representing undergraduate research in eight different labs attended the 49th Annual Western Psychology Conference for Undergraduate Research (WPCUR) at St. Mary's College. Projects ranged from work on children's learning, to the role of technology in dating relationships, to memory decline in aging, to the neuroscience of stress and alcohol.
At WPCUR, undergraduate research assistants in the Lindsay Halladay (Psychology and Neuroscience) Lab won Best Poster Award at the 49th annual Western Psychology Conference for Undergraduate Research, held at St. Mary's last weekend. Max Bjorni '21 (Neuroscience and Biology), Natalie Rovero '20 (Neuroscience and Psychology), and Alex Quan '21 (Neuroscience) were recognized for their research on the neural mechanisms mediating adulthood alcohol-seeking behavior as a function of developmental adversities (early life trauma and/or adolescent alcohol exposure). Max, Natalie, and Alex are investigating long-term effects of stress on the brain's drive to seek alcohol, using a mouse model, with the hopes of pinpointing a neural target for therapeutic interventions in individuals exposed to trauma in early childhood and/or neural alterations that result from alcohol's effects on the developing brain. Notably, Halladay Lab RAs (7 undergrads) were a small fraction of the impressive 30+ SCU undergrads that presented research at WPCUR this year. Research included work from Psychology labs led by Kirsten Read, Birgit Koopmann-Holm, Lisa Whitfield, Kieran Sullivan, Jui Bhagwat, Matt Bell, Patti Simone, and Tim Urdan.