The faculty in the Department of Neuroscience are dedicated to increasing basic knowledge of the brain and nervous system with the goal of improving the understanding of mental, behavioral, and neurodevelopmental functioning. The Department offers a Batchelor’s of Science degree as well as a minor in Neuroscience. It is also the administrative home of the interdisciplinary Behavior, Cognition and Neuroscience (BCaN) PhD program and the university-wide Center for Neuroscience and Behavior (CNB). All members of the Department of Neuroscience faculty direct active research programs spanning topics in addiction, decision-making, development, memory, neurohormonal regulation, and nutrition, among others:

• BS Neuroscience
• PhD Behavior, Cognition, and Neuroscience (BCaN)

Research Labs & Projects

• Behavioral & Neural Homeostasis Lab, Center for Neuroscience & Behavior, and Laboratory for Behavioral & Neural Homeostasis
  T. Davidson
• Computational & Systems Neuroscience Lab
  M. Laubach
• Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Lab
  L. Bayet
• Developmental Neuroscience Lab
  C. Stoodley
• Nutritional Neuroscience Lab
  K. Holton
• Psychopharmacology Lab
  A. Riley

See also: undergraduate Research Opportunities with neuroscience faculty.

Recent Faculty Highlights

Please find more research and professional activites from faculty and students at our Research & Publications page.

• Laurie Bayet was awarded the 2023 NARSAD Young Investigator Grant

• An AU team led by Bei Xiao and other faculty won a $5.7 million cooperative research agreement from the US National Science Foundation’s Accelerating Research Translation program. The award will help AU foster greater use of evidence in the public and private sectors by producing new knowledge on best practices in research translation, training scholars in the effective conduct of research translation, and supporting the dissemination of research findings that have the potential to benefit society.
• Bei Xiao was awarded $420K from the NIH/National Eye Institute to support the project "Learning diagnostic latent representations for human material perception: common mechanisms and individual variability."
• Bayet L. (2022) How infants learn from a world of faces : Implications for racial biases and maskwearing. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences 9, 65-72. DOI: 10.1177/23727322211068007.
• Riley, A., Manke, H., and Huang, S. (2022) Impact of the aversive effects of drugs on their use and abuse. Behavioural Neurology, 2022, 8634176, 1-27. doi: 10.1155/2022/8634176
• Davidson, T. L. & Stevenson, R.J. (2022). Appetitive interoception, the hippocampus and western‑style diet. Reviews in Endocrinology and Metabolic Disorders, 23, 845–859.
• Davidson, T.L., Ramirez, E., Kwarteng, E.A., Djan, K.G., Faulkner, L.M., Parker, M.N., Yang, S., Zenno, A., Kelly, N.R., Shank, L.M., Tanofsky-Kraff, M., Snelling, A., Irvine Belson, S., Hyde, A., Chen,K.Y., & Yanovski, J.A. (2022), Retrieval-induced forgetting in children and adolescents with and without obesity, International Journal of Obesity, 46, 851–858.
• Holton KF. Micronutrients May Be a Unique Weapon Against the Neurotoxic Triad of Excitotoxicity, Oxidative Stress and Neuroinflammation: A Perspective. Frontiers in Neuroscience, section Neuroenergetics, Nutrition and Brain Health. 2021 Sep; 15:726457. DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2021.726457.
• Katie Holton received a grant from the Department of Defense’s Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program to conduct a multi-site clinical trial titled, “Confirmation of the Low Glutamate Diet as a Treatment for Gulf War Illness.”
• Saldanha, CJ. (2022). Spatial and Temporal Specificity of Neuroestradiol provision in the songbird. J. Neuroendocrinology.
• Amarante, L. M., & Laubach, M. (2021). Coherent theta activity in the medial and orbital frontal cortices encodes reward value. eLife, 10, e63372.
• Stoodley C.J. and Tsai P.T. (2021) Adapting predictions for social contexts: The cerebellar contribution to social behaviors. Annual Review of Neuroscience 44:475-493.
• Catherine Stoodley received an NIH grant for “Cerebellum and autism: Regional specialization for social and executive functions” and another for “Effects of age and lesion location on motor, cognitive and behavioral outcomes in pediatric posterior fossa patients.”
• Kisner, A., Slocomb, J. E., Sarsfield, S., Gupta, J. F., Kumar, A., Aponte, Y. Electrophysiological properties and projections of lateral hypothalamic parvalbumin positive neurons. PloS ONE. 13(6): e0198991. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0198991.